A possible future route of study in this area should aim to examine the populations of apex predators and mesopredators in this woodland, and examine whether the mesopredator release hypothesis is a good fit for these findings.

Implications for bird conservation in the U.K.

, and may be accounted for by the presence of higher level predators not present in the U.S., such as bagders and foxes.  

Limitations

Artificial nest experiments have inherent flaws, and the results are not always directly applicable to wild bird populations. Artificial nests can overestimate predation rates, by attracting different predators and    do not mimic the seasonal variation in predation rates observed in natural nest experiments \cite{Zanette_2002,WEIDINGER_2008}. The cryptic nature of artificial nests may provide a source of bias during fixed nest experiments, especially if there are associated sensory cues. While olfactory cues from the plasticine eggs in this experiment was controlled for, the artificial nests were made from non-native conifer leaves, which may have guided predators towards the nests. This experiment was also short lived, having only been run for 2 weeks post spring, which only provides a brief insight into the nature of the edge of this forest.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Cristina Banks-Leite of Imperial College London for help and advice regarding the pilot study, statistical analysis and invaluable guidance. I would also like to thank the technical staff at Silwood Park for their assistance using the GPS unit for spatial analysis. Many thanks to the Biology Undergraduate department, without whom this project could not be possible.