Nest-site fidelity and breeding dispersal by Common Tailorbirds in a tropical forest

Background:Information pertaining to nest-site fidelity and breeding dispersal over successive years can help to better our understanding of how birds respond to nest predation.Methods:By using mist nets and tracking the color banded individuals,we investigated nest-site fidelity and breeding dispersal by Common Tailorbirds(Orthotomus sutorius)throughout a year and between successive years in 2017–2018.Results:The present study showed that Common Tailorbirds could produce up to four clutches per breeding season.When multiple broods were produced within a year,breeding pairs remained together,and the nest rebuilding rate was up to 92.2%,with only four cases(7.8%)in which birds reused their old nests.The dispersal distance between the nests during multiple breeding was found to be 10.0±10.5 m,and nest-site fidelity within the same year was 90.0%.By the second year of breeding,76.2%of individuals remained in the original breeding pairs,while for those that did switch partners,the females remained in the nest from the previous year and paired with new males.The dispersal distance between years was 26.5±41.9 m,and nest-site fidelity between different years was 80.1%.There was no significant difference between within-year and between-year dispersal distances.Moreover,there was no significant difference in the dispersal distance of rebuilt nests between birds that had experienced nest predation and those that had not.Conclusions:Our findings suggest that Common Tailorbirds maintain a high degree of fidelity to mates and nestsites,and nest predation had no significant effect on territorial changes or breeding dispersal distance between each breeding attempt.

Comparative urbanization of birds in China and Europe based on birds associated with trees

Urbanization effects on living organisms are spatially heterogeneous.Here we quantified the abundance of birds per tree in forested urban and rural habitats for 85,829 trees mainly in China and Europe.A population model was based on the assumption that:1)birds have a normally distributed habitat preference;2)an increase in population size linked to the habitat preference;3)a population size dependent on the habitat preference;and 4)the removal of a certain fraction of individuals giving rise to extinction.We tested for large-scale differences in the impact of urbanization on the frequency distribution of the difference in abundance between urban and rural habitats in China and parts of Europe.The difference in the frequency distribution of urban population density of birds in trees minus rural population density of birds in trees in China and Europe was statistically significant suggesting that the abundance of birds differed between trees in urban and rural habitats,but more so in China than in Europe.We hypothesize that more pronounced differences in China than in Europe may have arisen due to the Four Pests Campaign in 1958-1962 that resulted in death of hundreds of millions of birds(mainly tree sparrows Passer monfanus,but also numerous other less common species that were starting to become urbanized around 1960).Species that were less common in 1960 could not sustain reductions in population size in urban areas and hence these species are still rare or absent in urban areas today 60 years later.