DOI: 10.5061/dryad.ncjsxksz6
title: Data from: Delayed incubation leads to hatching failure of a Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia) nest

description: Birds face strong selective pressures to complete individual nesting
 attempts as quickly as possible to minimize exposure of nests to predators
 and weather, maximize renesting potential, and maximize hatching success.
 As a result, the duration of developmental periods and overall nest
 periods are often relatively constant within species. However, birds may
 sometimes be subject to acute energetic constraints that may preclude them
 from initiating incubation at the optimal time. We report an extraordinary
 case of delayed incubation by a female Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia)
 in Oregon, USA, which contrasted sharply with a large sample of nests
 monitored by motion-activated video cameras in western North America from
 2015 to 2018. The focal female delayed incubation by 11 days following
 clutch completion and subsequently experienced near-total hatching failure
 of her clutch. This observation corroborates previous experimental studies
 regarding the limits to egg viability and trade-offs between the timing of
 incubation onset and hatching success. These findings illustrate the acute
 trade-offs faced by nesting birds, and the cost of delayed incubation that
 we observed in this owl could help explain the cause of asynchronous
 hatching.
description: We placed motion-activated infrared video cameras into Burrowing
 Owl nest boxes (underground "artificial burrows") at five study
 sites in western North America including at the Umatilla Army Depot in
 Oregon, USA. Each camera was connected to a mobile DVR programmed to
 record a 2.5-minute clip each time there was motion inside the burrow. We
 reviewed all videos in their entirety from the laying and hatching stages,
 to identify the time each egg was laid and hatched. From the laying of the
 final egg through the hatching of the first egg, we reviewed at least four
 2-hour periods per day, including at least two nocturnal hours. We
 recorded the start time and stop time of each incubation bout and
 incubation recess to the nearest second. We ignored incubation bouts and
 recesses lasting &lt;60 seconds in duration (which often involved an
 incubating bird repositioning herself or turning the eggs) because we
 assumed that changes in egg temperature during bouts &lt;60 would be
 negligible (Naylor et al., 1988, Cooper & Voss, 2013). 
 To calculate daily attentiveness, we defined the laying stage as
 the period from the day of nest initiation through the day of clutch
 completion, and we defined the incubation stage as the period from the
 first full day after the last egg was laid through the last full day
 before the first egg hatched. We did not include the last day of laying or
 the first day of hatching in our calculation of daily nest attentiveness
 during the incubation stage because nest attentiveness is typically lower
 when the clutch is not complete. We defined Incubation Period Length as
 the days elapsed between the laying of the final egg and the hatching of
 the final viable egg. We calculated hatching success (Proportion Hatched)
 as the number of hatched eggs divided by the number of eggs in the full
 clutch.
description: # Data from: Delayed incubation leads to hatching failure of a Burrowing
 Owl (*Athene cunicularia*) nest
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ncjsxksz6](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ncjsxksz6) **Recommended citation for this dataset:** Lundblad, C. G., & Conway, C. J. (2024). Data from: Delayed incubation leads to hatching failure of a Burrowing Owl (*Athene cunicularia*) nest. Dataset, Dryad Digital Repository, [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ncjsxksz6](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ncjsxksz6) ## DATA & FILE OVERVIEW ### LundbladConway\_Attentiveness\_Data\_JOO.csv * Nest_ID: Unique individual identifier for a single Burrowing Owl nest observed with continuous video recording * Date: MM/DD/YYYY; 24-hour calendar day on which nest attentiveness was measured * Nest Stage: Stage of nesting: laying, incubation * Laying_Last4: A binary indicator variable where "Y" indicates that the particular day of the nest cycle was during the final 4 days of the laying period * Incubation_First11: A binary indicator variable where "Y" indicates that the particular day of the nest cycle was during the first 11 days after clutch completion (i.e., the first 11 days of the incubation period) ### LundbladConway\_IncubationPeriod\_HatchSuccess\_JOO * Nest_ID: Unique individual identifier for a single Burrowing Owl nest observed with continuous video recording * Year: The year during which the nest was monitored * Site: Study site of the nest where SSNWR = the California site; NV = Nevada study site; TEAD = Utah study site; ID = Idaho study site; UAD = Oregon study site * Proportion_Hatched: Proportion of the clutch that hatched successfully at the given nest * Incubation_Length_Days: Duration of incubation period measured from the laying of the final egg through the hatching of the final egg, based on continuous video recording inside nest burrows