Washington birds breeding phenology

This Breeding Phenology of Washington Birds study encompasses at its most fundamental level when birds breed and how many eggs they lay. In an area as large and with as many diverse landscapes as Washington, the timing of breeding may be affected by geography and elevation, and at particular localities by yearly variation in weather and other environmental conditions.

What is breeding phenology?

When birds breed, their behavior and nesting success is affected by a number of environmental variables, including geography, elevation, weather, and other conditions that may change with the seasons. For example, average clutch size is known to change through the season in many species, with later broods tending to be smaller. This is probably because later-fledged young are less competitive, thus forcing parents that raise late broods to invest more in each fledgling to increase its chances of competing successfully with those hatched earlier in the breeding season. The study of how such seasonal environmental changes influence regularly occurring biological phenomena is called phenology.