Nest predation in suburban and rural woodlots of northern Ohio

The intensity of nest predation in small woodlots was compared across three regions in Ohio: (1) suburban Cuyahoga County, (2) semirural Lorain County and (3) rural Huron County. Artificial nests, each holding three Japanese quail eggs, were placed in seven Cuyahoga Co. woodlots, four Lorain Co. woo dlots and four Huron Co. woodlots during July and August 1991. Half of the nests were placed on the ground, half were placed in the lower branches of trees. Eggs were removed from 257 of 354 nests. Ground nests suffered signi ficantly more predation than tree nests, indicating that mammals were the p rimary predators. No significant difference in egg removal was found among the three regions, and no significant dependence was found between woodlot size and rate of nest predation. The lack of a suburban/rural difference an d the insignificance of the woodlot size/predation relationship do not corr oborate previously published studies that used methodologies similar to our s. The deviant nature of our results may reflect the more extensive croplan d in our rural study region that provides food resources to sustain large p opulations of mammalian nest predators.