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Hunting bag statistics to assess the onset of the pre-nuptial migration — the case study of the song thrush in the central Mediterranean

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Abstract

The Birds Directive (2009/147/EC) states that migratory game birds are not hunted “during their return to their rearing grounds”. It follows that for each huntable species, Member States shall assess the 10-day period (TDP) in which the pre-nuptial migration starts. For birds wintering in Europe, the onset of northward movements cannot be easily defined. In wintering areas, individuals with different migration patterns may coexist, and some migrants may fly northward while a relevant fraction of the population remains stationary. In this regard, one challenging case is represented by the song thrush Turdus philomelos, a short-distance migrant passerine intensively hunted across southern Europe. We used hunting bag data (n = 839,027) gathered in Liguria (NW Italy) during 6 consecutive hunting seasons (2006/2007–2011/2012) to test whether the second TDP of January actually corresponds to the beginning of northward movements, as previously determined based on ringing-recovery data. The spatial and temporal variation of hunting bag data was coherent with the migration pattern already described and confirmed the onset of return movements in early January. The analysis of hunting bag seasonality suggests that the increase in January harvesting is not due to wintering displacements induced by cold spells, but to regular movements that are predictable in time and direction, typical of migrating birds. Our analysis proves that hunting statistics, when collected with standardised protocols and checked to avoid bias due to variations in hunting efforts, can be used to describe the phenology of migration.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Regione Liguria who developed an efficient hunting bag data collection system, and to the Ligurian hunters who compiled the hunting cards from which originated our dataset. Special thanks to Fernando Spina and Lorenzo Serra for their valuable suggestions and support in the preparation of the manuscript and to Kelsey Horvat for the linguistic revision. We also wish to thank an anonymous referee who contributed to improve the previous version of the text.

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  1. ISPRA - Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale, Via Ca’ Fornacetta 9, 40064, Ozzano Emilia, Italy

    Alessandro Andreotti, Andrea Marcon & Simona Imperio

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  1. Alessandro Andreotti
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Correspondence to Alessandro Andreotti.

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Andreotti, A., Marcon, A. & Imperio, S. Hunting bag statistics to assess the onset of the pre-nuptial migration — the case study of the song thrush in the central Mediterranean. Eur J Wildl Res 68, 46 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-022-01594-7

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