Dear Miss Braimoh: Ref: Managing human disturbance: factors influencing flight initiation distance of birds in a West African nature reserve Our referees have now considered your paper and have recommended publication in Ostrich. We are pleased to accept your paper, but reserve the right to suggest further changes and implement minor edits upon agreement with yourselves. We will then forward all documents to the publisher for copy editing and typesetting. You will receive proofs for checking, and instructions for transfer of copyright in due course. The publisher also requests that proofs are checked and returned within 48 hours of receipt. Thank you for your contribution to Ostrich and we look forward to receiving further submissions from you.

Animal tolerance towards humans can be a key factor facilitating wildlife–human coexistence, yet traits predicting its direction and magnitude across tropical animals are poorly known. Using 10,249 observations for 842 bird species inhabiting open tropical ecosystems in Africa, South America, and Australia, we find that avian tolerance towards humans was lower (i.e., escape distance was longer) in rural rather than urban populations and in populations exposed to lower human disturbance (measured as human footprint index). In addition, larger species and species with larger clutches and enhanced flight ability are less tolerant to human approaches and escape distances increase when birds were approached during the wet season compared to the dry season and from longer starting distances. Identification of key factors affecting animal tolerance towards humans across large spatial and taxonomic scales may help us to better understand and predict the patterns of species distributions in the Anthropocene.

No abstract

Despite many bird species migrating regularly within the African continent, in response to rainfall and breeding opportunities, documented evidence of the spatiotemporal patterns of such movements is scarce. We use satellite telemetry to document the year round movement of an intra-African migrant breeding in the savannah zone of sub-Saharan Africa, the African cuckoo. After breeding in central Nigeria, the birds migrated to more forested sites in the Adamawa region of Cameroon (n = 2) and western Central African Republic (n = 1). Departure from the breeding ground coincided with deteriorating environmental conditions whereas arrival at the non-breeding sites matched period of increasing vegetation greenness. Migratory movements generally occurred during dark hours. In total, an average distance of 748 km in 66 d was covered during the post-breeding migration and 744 km in 27 d during return journey with considerable individual variation and with more stopover sites used during postbreeding migration. The diversity of migration routes followed suggests a relatively variable or flexible initial migration strategy, high individual route consistency as well as high fidelity for non-breeding grounds.