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We determined breeding season habitat preferences for a declining migrant grassland bird, the Whinchat Saxicola rubetra, using intensive, territory‐scale habitat and invertebrate data, and independently gathered landscape‐scale field survey and remotely sensed habitat data to determine whether the same habitat relationships were evident at both spatial scales. At the territory scale, low‐elevation...
Trans‐equatorial avian migrants tend to breed, moult and migrate – the main energy‐requiring events in their lifecycle – at different times. Little is known about the relationship between wing moult and pre‐migratory fuelling in waders on their non‐breeding grounds, where time is less constrained than during their brief high‐latitude breeding season. We determined age‐related strategies of Wood Sandpipers...
The international wildlife trade is a significant source of introduced alien species, some of which proceed to become invasive and cause negative environmental and economic effects. However, not all introduced aliens establish viable populations, and it is important to identify the factors that determine establishment success. We explore the role of environmental suitability (including anthropogenic...
Habitat availability might be the most important determinant of success for a species reintroduction programme, making investigation of the quality and quantity of habitat needed to produce self‐sustaining populations a research priority for reintroduction ecologists. We used a stochastic model of population dynamics to predict whether attempts to improve existing breeding territories using artificial...
Female song in passerine birds may be more common than traditionally assumed, but it is not well‐documented or understood, especially in migratory species. We describe the first evidence of sex‐specific songs produced by female Prothonotary Warblers, as well as the results of playback trials aimed at exploring the adaptive function (if any) of this female‐specific vocalization. Based on the behaviour...
As the global trend towards urbanization continues, the need to understand its impact on wildlife grows. Species may have different levels of tolerance to urban disturbance; some even appear to thrive in urban areas and use human‐subsidized resources. However, the physiological costs and trade‐offs faced by urban‐dwelling species are still poorly understood. We assess the evidence for a negative impact...
The Rufous‐headed Robin Larvivora ruficeps is one of the world's rarest and least known birds. We summarize the known records since it was first described in 1905 from Shaanxi Province, central China. All subsequent Chinese records are from seven adjacent localities in nearby Sichuan Province. We studied its phylogenetic position for the first time using mitochondrial and nuclear markers for all species...
Male ornaments, such as plumage coloration, frequently serve as signals. The signalling function of similar ornaments in females has, however, received much less attention despite the fact that conspicuousness of their ornaments is often comparable to those of males. In this study we tested the signalling function of a plumage trait present in both sexes in the Eurasian Tree Sparrow Passer montanus...
Despite major advances in sex ratio theory, how offspring sex should vary with hatching order remains unclear. We examine nestling sex ratio in the Southern Grey Shrike Lanius meridionalis according to hatching order and clutch size. Southern Grey Shrike nestlings present a different sex ratio with body‐mass rank order depending on clutch size. When the clutch size was five eggs (with a very low risk...
The breeding success of endangered colonial nesting species is important for their conservation. Many species of Gyps vultures form large breeding colonies that are the foci of conservation efforts. The Cape Vulture is a globally threatened species that is endemic to southern Africa and has seen a major reduction in its population size (≥ 50% over 48 years). There is evidence that breeding colonies...
Climate‐driven shifts in prey phenology may lead to asynchrony with the timing of peak resource requirements of their predators, leading to a reduction in productivity and population declines. Migrant species that cannot adjust their arrival times may be particularly at risk, especially those that breed in seasonal environments and for which a temporarily super‐abundant prey source is important, such...
In many taxa, environmental changes that alter resource availability and energetics, such as climate change and land use change, are associated with changes in body size. We use wing length as a proxy for overall structural body size to examine a paradoxical trend of declining wing length within a Yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella population sampled over 21 years, in which it has been previously shown...
Breeding dispersal is the movement of an individual between breeding attempts and is usually associated with the disruption of the social pair bond, although mates may disperse together as a social unit. In monogamous territorial species, the decision to disperse may be affected by individual attributes such as sex, age and condition of the disperser. However, environmental and social contexts may...
Given the high costs of brood parasitism, avian hosts have adopted different defences to counteract parasites by ejecting the foreign egg or by deserting the parasitized nest. These responses depend mainly on the relative size of the host compared with the parasitic egg. Small hosts must deal with an egg considerably larger than their own, so nest desertion becomes the only possible method of egg...
Fundamental to effective management of migratory waterbird populations is an understanding of their flyway delineation. Taiga Bean Geese Anser fabalis fabalis wintering in NW Denmark, Scotland and England are considered to originate from northern and central Sweden, southern and central Norway (‘Western flyway’), those wintering in southern Sweden, NE and southern Denmark are considered to originate...
A growing body of work shows that climate change is the cause of a number of directional shifts in the spring phenology of migratory birds. However, changes in autumn phenology are well studied and their consistency across species, as well as their link with population trends, remains uncertain. We investigate changes in the autumn migration dates of 11 species of soaring birds over the Strait of...
Because many species of large birds must remain capable of flight during moult and breeding, complete replacement of all flight feathers often takes two or more years, with the result that their plumage normally includes many faded, worn and sometimes even broken feathers. It seems adaptive for such birds to have the ability to quickly replace severely damaged feathers. In search of such a feather...
The study of urban birds has increased exponentially in the last century. A prior review of the scientific literature up to the year 2000 found 100 research articles on urban birds, but in the past decade alone, over 1000 have been published. Here I review the studies from 2006–2015 to characterize their approach, location, general findings and recent obsessions, with an eye toward suggesting important...