Abstract
Birds move between breeding locations to gain a better territory, avoid competition or reduce the deleterious effect of inbreeding. We investigated breeding site fidelity in a small European passerine, the penduline tit (Remiz pendulinus). This species has an exceptionally diverse breeding system, in which both males and females may have up to 5–7 mates in a single breeding season, and the eggs are incubated by a single parent: either the male or the female. We investigated the movements of males and females within three breeding seasons in Southern Hungary (2002–2004). Males moved for shorter distances between breeding sites (116 m, 63–333 m; median, lower quartile–upper quartile) than females (942 m, 415–2,382 m). Movements of males and females were consistent between years, and they were repeatable between subsequent nests of males, but not of females. Taken together, our results suggest that adult male penduline tits are more site-faithful than adult females. We suggest that this difference has an implication on their breeding ecology since male parental behaviour (desert/care) is expected to be influenced by local mating opportunities, whilst female parental behaviour is likely to depend on the mating opportunities in a large area around their breeding site.
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Acknowledgements
This paper is dedicated to Professor Christian Pitra on the occasion of his 65th birthday, 29 April 2006. The project was funded by the Hungarian Science Foundation (OTKA T031706, T043390), The Royal Society (15056) and by grants from the Dutch ‘Groningen Universiteits Fonds’ and the Dutch ‘Marco Polo Fonds’. T. Székely was also supported by BBSRC (BBS/B/05788). Permissions were provided by the Kiskunság National Park and Szegedfish Kft. We acknowledge the assistance of M. Bleeker, K. Hayes, P. Horváth, S.A. Kingma, O. Menyhárt and T. Szabó in collecting data in the field. We also want to thank Prof. J. Szabad for his comments on an early draft. The study was licensed by the Kiskunsági National Park, Hungary (577-3/2002, 390-2/2003, 1097-5/2004).
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Mészáros, A.L., Kajdocsi, S., Szentirmai, I. et al. Breeding site fidelity in penduline tit Remiz pendulinus in Southern Hungary. Eur J Wildl Res 52, 39–42 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-005-0001-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-005-0001-7