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Spatio-temporal use of the urban habitat by feral pigeons (Columba livia )

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Abstract

Feral pigeons are descendants of wild rock pigeons that have adapted to the urban habitat. They have partially conserved the foraging behaviour of their wild ancestors (flights to agricultural areas) but have also developed new habits. Previous studies on the foraging strategies of feral pigeons have given various results, e.g. maximum distances reached by the pigeons (measured in a straight line from the resting places) differed between 0.3–0.5 km and 18–25 km. This study focuses on the spatio-temporal activity of feral pigeons in the urban habitat. We equipped 80 free-living feral pigeons from Basel, Switzerland with GPS receivers. We found three different foraging strategies for pigeons in Basel: (1) in the streets, squares and parks near the home loft, (2) in agricultural areas surrounding the city, (3) on docks and railway lines in harbours. The maximum distance reached by a pigeon was 5.29 km. More than 32% of the pigeons remained within 0.3 km of the home lofts and only 7.5% flew distances of more than 2 km. Females covered significantly longer distances than males, preferring to fly to more abundant and predictable food sources. Temporal activity patterns showed to be influenced by sex, breeding state and season. In contrast to wild rock pigeons and to feral pigeons in other cities, pigeons in Basel showed a clear bimodal activity pattern for breeding birds only. The differences between our results and those of other studies seem to be partly method-dependent, as the GPS-technique allows to record the pigeons’ localisations continuously in contrast to other methods. Other differences might be due to different kinds of food supply in the various cities. Our study shows that feral pigeons have individual foraging strategies and are flexible enough to adapt to different urban environments.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by a grant from the Freiwillige Akademische Gesellschaft Basel. For valuable advice and help, we thank particularly C. Schindler for the statistics, N. Corman, K. O’Leary, A. Cannizzo and the anonymous referees for the comments and corrections of the manuscript. We thank G. Dell’Omo and H.-P. Lipp who introduced us to the GPS-tracking method. We acknowledge the contribution of B. Thomi (Grundbuch- und Vermessungsamt, Justizdepartement des Kantons Basel-Stadt) who made the electronic map of Basel available. We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of MeteoSchweiz for the light intensity measurements. We are very grateful to A. Ochsenbein for technical support and assistance in the field. This study was performed with permission from the responsible Swiss authorities and the experiments complied with Swiss laws.

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  1. Integrative Biology, Institute of Anatomy, University of Basel, Pestalozzistrasse 20, CH-4056, Basel, Switzerland

    Eva Rose & Daniel Haag-Wackernagel

  2. Institute of Conservation and Environmental Protection/Biogeography, University of Basel, St. Johanns-Vorstadt 10, CH-4056, Basel, Switzerland

    Peter Nagel

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  1. Eva Rose
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Correspondence to Eva Rose.

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Rose, E., Nagel, P. & Haag-Wackernagel, D. Spatio-temporal use of the urban habitat by feral pigeons (Columba livia ) . Behav Ecol Sociobiol 60, 242–254 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-006-0162-8

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