Departure time versus departure rate: How to forage optimally when you arestupid

Foragers unable to leave a patch at the optimal moment must act as constrai ned foragers. Extending the results of Houston and McNamara (1985), we comp are a blundering forager that leaves patches at a constant rate with an unc onstrained optimal forager that leaves patches at the optimal time. When a dimensionless measure of environmental quality exceeds a particular value, the blundering forager remains in patches longer on average than the uncons trained optimal forager. The relative success of the blundering forager is, paradoxically, lowest when its average departure time exactly matches that of the unconstrained optimal forager. When foraging in two dimensions, blu ndering provides a robust spatial foraging strategy for dealing with unknow n differences in patch size.