The competition between nestlings for food is so intense that they tend to use everything at their disposal to attract their parents’ attention – noisy begging calls, colourful gapes and plumage.
However, experiments show that broadcasting recordings of chicks’ begging calls does indeed attract predators, and that beyond a certain noise level the dangers outweigh the benefits.
Great tit chicks, for example, stop begging in response to a parent’s alarm call. And a study of blackcaps found that under very high predation pressure chicks completely refrain from chirping until they fledge, relying instead on visual begging strategies.
