Dynamic table‐visiting behavior of birds at outdoor restaurants and cafés

Fear of humans and its effect on animal behavior is increasingly being recognized as an important structuring force in ecological landscapes, with consequences for interactions communities. When aggressive, physically dominant species are displaced by anthropogenic disturbance, weaker exploit competitor predator downtimes to forage previously risky places. Birds feeding at outdoor restaurants cafés association exposed fluctuating levels perceived danger caused frequently changing densities human diners. Consequently, birds must make decisions about which dining tables visit based trade-offs between foraging gain from avian competitors humans. We tested the hypothesis that interspecific differences response danger, combined varying diners, dynamically alter bird predominates tables. found house sparrows (Passer domesticus) tolerated higher diner-densities than larger-sized, more Eurasian jackdaws (Coloeus monedula). Sparrows were usually first diner-occupied spent time there jackdaws. However, diner-abandoned tables, this pattern changed: During low surrounding predominant visits minutes visiting, while high predominated. Moreover, along a gradient increasing diner-density, gradually replaced abandoned once sparrow chose table visit, factors other diner-density influenced choice where (table-top or ground). To our knowledge, research scientific study table-visiting cafés, reveal there.