Age, landscape, and arrival date explain ranging behavior of wintering red kites in southwest Europe

Abstract

Understanding intrinsic and extrinsic influences of movement behavior in migratory species, with the potential to recommend management actions for species of conservation concern, requires data from across the species' range. For some raptor species, such as the red kite (Milvus milvus; kite), existing data focus on breeding populations or movements en route to wintering areas without considering movements within the wintering areas. Here, we contribute to filling this knowledge gap by investigating landscape-level associations of kites in their southwestern European winter ranges between 2015 and 2020. We also explore aspects of the migration process in terms of geographical patterns in the location of over-wintering grounds, including time spent and distances traveled within them. We predicted that space use in overwintering areas would be linked to the proportional amount of open, lowland, or urban land cover they contain at the landscape level. Specifically, we tested whether winter range sizes (95% kernel density estimator [KDE] home ranges and 50% KDE core areas) would be smaller in areas with greater proportional open and urban land cover within kite ranges. Controlling for the effects of age and sex, we compared results in 3 over-wintering regions: the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and the Pyrenean region of southern France. We tracked 36 kites by global positioning system-global system for mobile communications (GPS-GSM) telemetry over 70 individual winters between 2015 and 2020. Kites wintering in the Pyrenees had

Causes, temporal trends, and the effects of urbanization on admissions of wild raptors to rehabilitation centers in England and Wales

“…Diurnal and nocturnal raptors are frequently used as ecological indicators due to their high positions within trophic networks (Buechley et al, 2019 ). Raptor species face a number of threats from anthropogenic activities such as direct and indirect poisoning (Garvin et al, 2020 ; Hughes et al, 2013 ), electrocution on powerlines (Lehman et al, 2007 ), road collisions (Gagné et al, 2015 ), and human persecution (Murgatroyd et al, 2019 ; Panter et al, 2021 ; Smart et al, 2010 ). For effective conservation programs, the key detrimental impacts of anthropogenic activities need to be identified and evidenced‐based conservation measures implemented to alleviate these threats (Hernandez et al, 2018 ; Holmes et al, 1993 ; Richardson & Miller, 1997 ).…”

Causes, temporal trends and the effects of urbanisation on admissions of wild raptors to rehabilitation centres in England and Wales

“…(2019) who examined patterns of Hen Harrier disappearances over grouse moors in northern England as a result of suspected illegal killing. In addition, Panter et al . (2021) used satellite telemetry to estimate survival in wintering Red Kites in south-western Europe and Oppel et al .…”

“…Diurnal and nocturnal raptors are frequently used as ecological indicators due to their high positions within trophic networks (Buechley et al 2019). Raptor species face a number of threats from anthropogenic activities such as direct and indirect poisoning (Hughes et al 2013;Garvin et al 2020), electrocution on powerlines (Lehman et al 2007), road collisions (Gagné et al 2015) and human persecution (Smart et al 2010;Murgatroyd et al 2019, Panter et al 2021. For effective conservation programmes, the key detrimental impacts of anthropogenic activities need to be identified and evidenced-based conservation measures implemented to alleviate these threats (Holmes et al 1993;Richardson & Miller 1997;Hernandez et al 2018).…”

“…Several methods have been applied to quantify the effects of anthropogenic activities on raptors. Such approaches include screening for organic pollutants and contaminants (López et al 2001;Chen et al 2010), monitoring the dynamics of the illicit wildlife trade (Panter & White 2020), analysis of powerline collisions data (Bevanger 1998;Kolnegari et al 2020), monitoring via remote tracking devices (Kendall & Virani 2012;McIntyre 2012;Panter et al , 2021 and wildlife rehabilitation admissions data (see Fix & Barrows 1990;Morishita et al 1998;Wendell et al 2002;Komnenou et al 2005;Rodríguez et al 2010;Thompson et al 2013;Al Zoubi et al 2020).…”

High Variability and Dual Strategy in the Wintering Red Kites (Milvus milvus)

“…However, there are still several gaps in the knowledge of the spatial ecology of many raptors, such as the red kite (Milvus milvus). The ecology of the red kite during its wintering period has been mainly studied based on field observations [10][11][12][13][14] and just a few studies have used GPS tracking technology [15,16] The red kite (Milvus milvus, Accipitridae) is a medium-sized, partially migratory raptor from the Western Palearctic. It is a facultative colonial bird that tends to group in roosts during winter, with an average of 70 individuals per roost [17].…”