Desert Birds Thrive Near Orchards but Struggle Near People
Expanding villages offer water and food to desert birds but also stress, predators, and disturbance, turning apparent oases into dangerous traps
Desert dwellers under pressure
In Israel’s Negev Desert, the social and intelligent Arabian Babbler Argya squamiceps has long fascinated scientists. These cooperative birds, which live in extended family groups, have adapted to one of the harshest environments on Earth. But as human settlements and agriculture expand across their desert home, researchers have begun to ask a vital question: is human proximity helping or hindering their survival?
A new study led by Krista Oswald and colleagues at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has revealed a complex answer. Using high-resolution tracking devices, the team discovered that babbler families nesting close to human villages raised smaller chicks with poorer growth – but those nesting near orchards, where food was plentiful and human disturbance low, produced the heaviest and healthiest young.
Following the babblers
The research, published in Ornithological Applications, tracked 13 Arabian Babblers from eight family groups across 16 nests during the 2023 breeding season. Each bird carried a lightweight tag connected to an advanced local tracking network known as ATLAS, which recorded their movements around Kibbutz Sde Boker thousands of times a day. In total, the study generated more than 190,000 location points, allowing the researchers to map precisely where each group foraged while feeding their chicks.
By combining these movement data with nest observations, Oswald’s team could link the birds’ habitat choices to the growth of their nestlings. The results showed that families nesting farther from villages had smaller foraging ranges yet heavier chicks. In contrast, groups that spent more time within villages – where food may be less suitable and human disturbance higher – raised lighter nestlings. The best outcomes occurred where birds foraged primarily in orchards, suggesting these managed landscapes offer reliable prey with minimal disruption.
A fine balance between resource and risk
Arabian Babblers are remarkably social. They live in groups where multiple adults help to feed and guard the nestlings of a dominant pair. In theory, proximity to people could benefit such cooperative species by providing steady food and water sources – a rare luxury in the desert. Yet Oswald and her co-authors found that this “urban oasis” can come at a cost. Human presence brought threats such as domestic cats, jackals and disturbance, which offset the advantages of greater resource availability.
“The results suggest that human-modified environments like orchards can support desert wildlife, but only when human activity is minimal,” the authors explain. “Villages themselves, despite offering food and water, may act as ecological traps.” Such traps attract animals to apparently rich environments that, in reality, reduce their survival or reproductive success.
Desert adaptation meets development
The study also highlighted how flexible these birds can be. As their chicks grew, the tracked adults gradually shifted their foraging effort from village edges toward orchards, perhaps recognising where the best prey could be found. However, while these behavioural shifts improved chick growth, they did not translate into higher nesting success overall, as predation and disturbance remained limiting factors across all habitats.
Arabian Babblers nesting in villages faced particularly high risks, echoing earlier research showing smaller broods, higher rates of predation, and lower survival in human-dominated areas. The findings suggest that despite appearing tolerant of people, these desert specialists are still best suited to more natural habitats on the open plateau – or to the transitional zones between orchards and wild desert, where they can benefit from both food and space.
Tracking the unseen
The study marks one of the first times high-frequency tracking data have been used to link precise foraging movements with breeding success in a desert bird. The ATLAS network allowed researchers to monitor multiple individuals simultaneously at fine scales, revealing subtle patterns invisible to traditional field methods. Such technology could revolutionise how scientists assess the real impacts of human expansion on wildlife, especially in under-studied dryland ecosystems.
For the Arabian Babblers of Sde Boker, survival in a human-shaped desert appears to depend on maintaining just the right distance: close enough to benefit from the resources of civilisation, but far enough to avoid its noise, predators and stress. As urban and agricultural footprints continue to spread across the Negev and other deserts worldwide, understanding that delicate balance may prove critical for safeguarding species that live on the edge.
October 2025
Read the full paper here
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