Moult in Birds of Prey: A Review of Current Knowledge and Future Challenges for Research

Abstract

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Benefits of extra food to reproduction depend on maternal condition

“…Although moult is mostly temporally separated from competing activities such as reproduction and migration (Jenni and Winkler , Barta et al ), in several species, including the migratory lesser kestrel, tight annual scheduling of the yearly cycle has promoted the evolution of moult–breeding overlap (Hemborg and Lundberg , Hemborg , Zuberogoitia et al ). Similarly to other raptors, lesser kestrels start their annual flight feather moult when incubating, females being more likely to do so than males (reviewed by Zuberogoitia et al ). Males, as in most falcons, are smaller, more agile, perform extensive mate‐feeding and carry most of the prey to their progeny (Donázar et al , Krüger ): they are thus likely to pay a greater cost than females for the moult–breeding overlap (Espie et al ).…”

“…Both parents contribute to rearing nestlings (Cramp ). During breeding, some adults initiate their complete annual moult by shedding a few primary feathers (usually between 1 and 3 feathers, mostly P4–P6; primaries numbered descendantly) (Cramp ; see also Zuberogoitia et al ).…”

“…In this study of the lesser kestrel Falco naumanni , a small (ca 120 g), sexually dimorphic, cavity‐nesting diurnal raptor with biparental care of the progeny (Cramp ), we provided extra food to breeders from the onset of egg laying to the early nestling rearing stage, and assessed the effects of food supplementation on different short‐term fitness components, such as: 1) parental body condition and oxidative status (in terms of plasma non‐enzymatic total antioxidant capacity, TAC and total oxidant status, TOS; Erel , ); 2) moult timing and extent (lesser kestrels may initiate the annual moult of primary feathers during reproduction; Cramp , Zuberogoitia et al ); 3) breeding performance, including egg and clutch characteristics (egg mass, clutch size, hatching success, duration of the incubation period), biparental nest desertion (i.e. the abandonment of eggs and/or nestlings by both parents, leading to reproductive failure for the current breeding season; Székely et al ), offspring growth and mortality; 4) patterns of primary sex allocation and sex‐biased offspring mortality.…”

Flight feather moult in Western Marsh Harriers during autumn migration

“…Breeding, migration, and moulting are considered the three-main energy-demanding events in the yearly cycle of birds (Newton 2008) and usually studied separately due to their isolated occurrence (Newton 2009). The importance of the moult in the life cycle of birds of prey for advancing our understanding of the ecology of each species has been recently highlighted by Zuberogoitia et al (2018). In several migrating species moulting leads to age-dependent migration strategies (Cristol et al 1999;Zenzal and Moore 2016) and these differences are especially pronounced among long-distance migrants.…”

“…Long distance migrant raptors typically avoid moulting during migration (Berthold 1975;Newton 1979) such as in the case of Osprey (Pandion haliaaetus; Ferguson-Lees and Christie 2001). In small raptors the time required to grow a new feather is 2-3 weeks while it is much longer in large raptors such as vulture species (Zuberogoitia et al 2018). In the case of damaged feathers, raptors can replace them much faster than in the usual time of moulting (Ellis et al 2016).…”