Fecal metabarcoding reveals differences in nestling diet across years with extreme variation in climate and arthropod availability in a montane songbird

This paper describes Mountain Chickadee (Poecile gambeli) nestling diet and prey preference at two elevational sites in the Sierra Nevada mountains across two years with extreme differences in overwinter snow accumulation. Fecal DNA metabarcoding was used to document arthropod prey in nestling diets and beat sheet sampling was used to measure the availability of arthropod prey in the environment. Data and code are included for analyses of differences in arthropod family-level community composition, diet composition, and patterns of prey preference and avoidance.