Influence of olfactory and visual cover on nest site selection and nest success for grassland-nesting birds.

There are several reasons why we expected ground‐nesting birds in grasslands to select high‐turbulence areas for the olfactory cover they provide, including: (1) high levels of turbulence intensity have been shown to decrease the probability that olfactory predators detect a simulated prey item in the same grasslands used for the current study (Fogarty, 2017 in press ), (2) the only other study evaluating selection for turbulence intensity at nest sites also found a nearly significant higher level of turbulence intensity at nest sites compared to random points despite a limited sample size of nests (Conover et al., 2010 ) and (3) turbulence, a variable we found to be inversely correlated with turbulence intensity in grasslands ( Fig.

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