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Social foraging and habitat use by a long-distance passerine migrant, Whinchat Saxicola rubetra, at a spring stopover site on the SE Adriatic coast

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Abstract

The preference for foraging in groups and the effect of physiognomic factors of a habitat on its use by foraging Whinchats (Saxicola rubetra) was studied during spring migration stopover in a mosaic cultural landscape at the SE Adriatic coast. Every record of spatially distinct Whinchats, either a solitary individual or a group, was referred to as a Whinchat unit. The units were classified as intensively foraging, less intensively foraging or non-foraging and divided into four size classes. The effect of physiognomic habitat factors on use of habitat by foraging Whinchat units was modelled. All possible additive models using logit link function were constructed from five independent physiognomic variables: (1) natural perches (NP), (2) artificial perches (AP), (3) high herbal vegetation (HHV), (4) open bushes (OB) and (5) heterogeneity of vegetation types (HVT). Variables HHV and OB were included simultaneously in the models. Models that were substantially supported by the data were selected according to second order Akaike’s information criterion AICc. Two such models contained variable(s) (1) NP and (2) NP + AP. The relative importance weights of physiognomic variables NP, AP, HVT, HHV and OB were 1, 0.38, 0.24, 0.13 and 0.13, respectively. Perches were thus the most important physiognomic habitat factor affecting habitat use by Whinchats in a mosaic cultural landscape. The great majority of Whinchats foraged in groups and the proportion of intensively foraging Whinchat units increased with unit size, leading to the conclusion that Whinchats preferred social to solitary foraging on the spring stopover at the SE Adriatic coast.

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Acknowledgments

The study was supported by the Slovenian Research Agency, through the programme of financing the postgraduate education of junior researchers, and by Euronatur foundation. We thank the Montenegrin National Institute for Protection of Nature for enabling us to carry out the fieldwork. We thank Borut Štumberger and Tomaž Skrbinšek for advice during the research and to dr. Reto Spaar, dr. Davorin Tome and an anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments on the manuscript.

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  1. National Institute of Biology, Večna pot 111, 1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Urša Koce & Damijan Denac

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  1. Urša Koce
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  2. Damijan Denac
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Correspondence to Urša Koce.

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Communicated by F. Bairlein.

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Koce, U., Denac, D. Social foraging and habitat use by a long-distance passerine migrant, Whinchat Saxicola rubetra, at a spring stopover site on the SE Adriatic coast. J Ornithol 151, 655–663 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-010-0506-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-010-0506-z

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