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Previous studies of avian nest predation have focused on how human‐induced changes in the landscape influence the frequency of predation However, natural variation in the abundance of predators due to their choice of habitat can also influence predation rate To determine if predation on artificial nests was influenced by forest stand type, we placed ground and shrub nests containing quail and plasticine eggs in contiguous coniferous, mixedwood and deciduous stands in the southern boreal mixedwood forest of central Canada Nest predators were identified using remotely triggered cameras and marks left in plasticine eggs, while the relative abundance of nest predators such as squirrels and corvids were estimated using acoustic‐visual surveys Using the fate of quail eggs to calculate predation rate, we found that predation was significantly higher in coniferous (67%) than in deciduous (17%) or mixedwood …