Volume 24 (2016): Issue 1 (June 2016)

Woodpecker species whose cavities are most usurped by Common Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) are widespread and generalists in their use of habitats. These include primarily woodpeckers that are similar in size to or slightly larger than the starling - such as the Great-spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) of Eurasia and the Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) and Red-bellied (Melanerpes carolinus) and Red-headed (M. erythrocephalus) Woodpeckers of North America. Usurpation occurs primarily in human-dominated urban, suburban and exurban habitats with pastures, sports fields and other open areas that serve as prime feeding habitats for starlings. Starlings prefer high, more exposed cavities with a minimal entrance diameter relative to their body size. Usurpation success depends on timing - optimally just as a cavity is completed and before egg-laying by the woodpeckers. Starlings likely reduce woodpecker populations in more open, human-dominated habitats. Woodpecker habitat losses and fragmentation are more serious problems that enhance habitat quality for starlings and reduce habitat quality for most woodpeckers. The only woodpeckers that might become in danger of extinction as a primary result of starling cavity usurpation are likely island species with small populations. Conservation of rare species limited to islands, such as Fernandina’s Flicker (Colaptes fernandinae) of Cuba, may depend on our ability to prevent the establishment of the Common Starling or other aggressive cavity competitors on their island.

Understanding and interpreting impacts of woodpecker cavity usurpation must include consideration of past woodpecker and Common Starling population fluctuations, breadth of habitats used by woodpecker species, and habitat limitations of Common Starlings. Conservation efforts for woodpeckers and other primary and secondary cavity-nesting species must focus on changes in tree, forest and ecosystem management to encourage maintenance of dead wood, large contiguous tracts that include diverse tree species and old growth, and forested linkages among such areas.

Despite previous inventories and atlas of the avifauna in the Basque Country, Northern Spain, the dense population of the Middle-spotted Woodpecker Leiopicus medius in the Izki forest was not discovered until the 1990’s. This population mainly occupies a 3,700 ha Quercus pyrenaica forest, showing an average density of 0.89 territories/10 ha. The occurrence and abundance of territories is positively associated to the density of large caducifolious Quercus trees (>35 cm diameter). While nesting trees are apparently easily available, large trees for foraging could be a more limiting resource, given the historical exploitation regime of the forest. There are several other massifs in the region with smaller populations, but the functional connectivity, demographic and dispersal dynamics relating the core Izki and the peripheral areas have not been investigated. The conservation relevance of the Izki population in the Spanish context is high and given the need to understand the effects of forest management, future research should include spatial ecology, breeding performance as well as population monitoring.

Changes in life history traits can reveal adaptations to changing environments. Red-cockaded Woodpeckers (Picoides borealis) are cooperative breeders that have specific reproductive habitat needs. We examined three separate sites in the southeastern United States to see how life history traits differed among isolated populations of Red-cockaded Woodpeckers from 1980 to 2013. We examined the life history traits group size, partial brood loss, number of fledglings, lay date, clutch size, and lifespan. Traits differed among sites, suggesting that populations were adapted to local conditions and different life history trade-offs were important under different environmental conditions at each site. At the two coastal sites in Florida and North Carolina, the family group sizes, lifespans, and partial brood loss were higher when compared to the inland site in North Carolina. Clutch size and number fledged were higher at the two northernmost sites when compared to the southern site. Identifying the differences in life history traits can allow more specific and effective management practices.

Nest care is an important parental contribution to offspring. In woodpeckers, males often have an equal or greater contribution to parental care, including nest sanitation. The Black-backed Woodpecker (Picoides arcticus) is a North American boreal woodpecker for which both parents are highly involved in parental care. By modifying their territory size in optimal and suboptimal habitat (e.g. burned vs unburned habitats), this species seems to have a large tolerance to variation in prey abundance at a landscape scale, and could provide a useful biological model to investigate the adaptability of parent care, particularly to relative contribution of each sex. We investigated sex- and habitat-specific parental care behaviour of Black-backed Woodpeckers at 9 nests by daily monitoring during the nestling period. Specifically, we examined two different aspects of parental care: 1) time spent at the nest, and 2) food delivery. We also compared relative contribution between sexes to nest sanitation. Despite our small sample sizes, our results show that males are more involved in nest sanitation and spend longer at the nest, and both sexes exhibit higher food delivery rates and spend less time at the nest in burned habitat. This latter result may suggest that greater effort is needed to provision Black-backed Woodpecker nestlings in unburned habitat compared to burned habitat.

This study was carried out in Hungary, in an old unmanaged riparian poplar-willow forest during the breeding seasons of 2014 and 2015. The occurrence of two invasive tree species, the green ash and boxelder, is significant in the study area, which influences negatively the populations of native riparian tree species in Central Europe. We studied Great-spotted Woodpecker nest sites in the presence of these invasive species. Throughout the study period, eight and twelve nesting cavity trees were mapped. Trees were recorded in 20-20 circular plots of 0.05 ha both for each mapped nest trees and random plots as well. Species, diameter at breast height and condition were recorded for each tree. Composition and diversity of nest site and random plots were compared. Distributions and preferences were calculated for nest tree use. Most of the recorded trees were invasive. Nest site plots had more native trees compared to random plots. Nest site showed higher diversity in terms of all three variables. Decayed and dead willow and white poplar hybrid trees were preferred for nesting. Diameter at breast height of nest trees was between 30-90 cm. Studies about cavity excavators in transformed habitats have high importance for nature conservation of riparian forests.

This paper presents the European fossil, subfossil and recent representatives of the Picidae family. Following the list of fossil and subfossil remains, the author analyzes and presents images of the osteological characteristics of the order’s 10 recent European species.

Skeletal parts that are usually present both in the fossil and subfossil material were examined (mandibula, coracoideum, scapula, humerus, ulna, metacarpus, the first phalanx of the second finger of the wing, femur, tibiotarsus, tarsometatarsus and distal phalanx). The text is complemented with the bibliography concerning the fossilized material, tables and figures and a size chart.

Different experiences from the past may have influence on individual’s behaviour through feedback mechanisms that can weaken or preserve the within-individual consistency of behavioural traits. Here, we aimed to find evidence for such feedback mechanisms that may operate on risk-taking behaviour via the effect of former experience to potential predation events in male Collared Flycatchers (Ficedula albicollis). We predicted that risk-taking of males would decrease after experiencing a predator’s attack in previous breeding seasons (negative feedback). We assessed risk-taking by flight initiation distance (FID) that is the distance at which an individual flees from an approaching predator, which was estimated for 234 individuals from different breeding seasons. Information on predation experience (i.e. occurrence of nest predation, the incidence of capture by human observers) was available from our long-term database on individual life histories. In a horizontal approach, we found no difference in FID when comparing males with former experience to predation with males naive to predators. A longitudinal approach relying on the repeated tests of the same individuals from different years yielded analogous results, we could not show a significant change in the risk-taking behaviour of the males as a consequence of experience to predation in past years. However, we found that individuals systematically took less risk over the years, which might be a consequence of acquiring general experience with age.

Understanding the migration routes of the Central European Spoonbill population is important for their conservation. Here we analysed movements of 3186 individuals of Eurasian Spoonbills marked with colour rings in the Carpathian Basin (Hungary, Croatia and Serbia) between 2003 and 2015, and a satellite tagged individual, which was equipped in Italy in 2013, and later moved to the Carpathian Basin. Migration routes of these Spoonbills predominantly followed the Adriatic Flyway, however, some birds were also found to both east and west from this flyway. We identified 59 stopover sites, 55 of which were located along the Adriatic Flyway. Colourringed juveniles (1cy), on average, spent 4.0±0.9 (SE) days on the stopover sites along the Adriatic Flyway during autumn migration, while non-juveniles (> 1cy) spent 2.6±1.0 (SE) days during autumn and 2.1±0.4 (SE) days during spring migration there. These durations were not significantly different. Duration of stops of the satellite tracked individual was between 7 and 15 days during autumn and between 1 and 12 days during spring migration. Our results indicate the existence of two alternative routes of the Adriatic Flyway between the Carpathian Basin and the wintering areas in southern Italy and the central part of coastal North-Africa. The North-Adriatic Flyway includes stopover sites in north-eastern Italy at the river mouth of River Isonzo, Lagunes of Venice and wetlands around River Po. The South Adriatic Flyway leads through the Balkan Peninsula, with stopover sites at the karst lakes of Bosnia and Herzegovina, mouth of the river Neretva (Croatia), Ulcinj Salinas (Montenegro) and wetlands in Gulf of Manfredonia (Italy). This hypothesis was also supported by the migration of the satellite tagged individual, the paths of which was described here in detail. The average coordinates of spring and autumn stopover sites were located at different parts of the flyway: it was in south-western Italy during autumn migration, while it was close to the western coast of the Balkan Peninsula during spring migration. We found examples for Spoonbills using the same migration paths along the same route year by year on both spring and autumn migration, but also noticed shifts between routes. Some observations indicate that individuals may show site fidelity to stopover sites between years, although the sample size was low for statistical significance.

We examined the autumn migration phenology of nine Siberian breeding songbirds: Thick-billed Warbler (Iduna aedon), Black-browed Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus bistrigiceps), Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler (Locustella certhiola), Lanceolated Warbler (L. lanceolata), Yellow-browed Warbler (Phylloscopus inornatus), Arctic Warbler (Ph. borealis), Dusky Warbler (Ph. fuscatus), Radde’s Warbler (Ph. schwarzi), Two-barred Warbler (Ph. plumbeitarsus) and compared the migration dynamic characteristics with their European occurrence time. The study was carried out within the Amur Bird Project in the Russian Far East along the river Amur at Muraviovka Park between 2011 and 2014. The birds were caught with mistnets and ringed with individually numbered rings. For the characterization of the migration, we used timing, the intervals and the peaks of the migration, the percentage of the recaptures and the average time between the first and the last captures. The timing of migration in the studied species differed in the timing, the intervals (30-67 days) and the migration peaks (14 August - 17 September).

Considering the size and location of the distribution area, the timing and annual patterns of European occurrences, it is likely that most individuals of Thick-billed Warbler, Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler, Dusky Warbler, Radde’s Warbler and Two-barred Warbler get to Europe due to the impact of Siberian cyclones. In case of Yellow- browed Warblers, other factors (reverse migration, weather conditions, dispersal movements) may also play a role. Because of their Scandinavian breeding populations, dispersion movement is the most likely reason for vagrants of Arctic Warbler and Lanceolated Warbler. The distribution of the Black-browed Reed Warbler is limited to the eastern edge of the continent, and therefore this species has no European record to date.

This paper is the second part of our bird ringing data analyses series (Harnos et al. 2015a) in which we continue to focus on exploring data using the R software. We give a short description of data distributions and the measures of data spread and explain how to obtain basic descriptive statistics. We show how to detect and select one and two dimensional outliers and explain how to treat these in case of avian ringing data.