Breeding success affects site fidelity in a WhinchatSaxicola rubetrapopulation in abandoned fields

Characterising demographic contributions to observed population change in a declining migrant bird

“…Prospective analysis suggested that improving adult survival would have the most benefit on the population growth rate, although considering the currently high adult survival compared to similar species, this may not be possible. Mean annual apparent survival of adult whinchats on Salisbury Plain (0.52) was similar to historical estimates for Europe (S ther 1989; 0.48), but higher than for Russia (0.27) where breeding sites were dispersed and site‐fidelity low (Shitikov et al ). In alpine meadows in Switzerland, male survival (0.48) was similar to Salisbury Plain, but female survival (0.21) was low due to mowing‐related mortality during incubation (Müller et al ).…”

“…Overall, fledglings per pair on Salisbury Plain (Table 1) was low compared to studies in late-cut meadows (3.3  0.3, SE) in Germany (Fischer et al 2013) and abandoned fields in Poland (4.17  0.24; Frankiewicz 2008) or Russia (3.77  3.07; Shitikov et al 2015). Nest survival per pair on Salisbury Plain was 26.3% (CI: 18.5-34.1%, via the delta method: Powell 2007) compared to a mean nest survival of 35% in Russia (mean calculated from 9 yearly estimates; CI: 23.1-46.5; Shitikov et al 2015), or nest survival rates of 41 and 55.7% in late mown meadows in Slovenia (CI: 27.4-55.7%) and Switzerland respectively (D. Tome and D. Denac pers. comm., M. Grüebler pers.…”

“…Blackburn and Cresswell 2015), adult whinchats on Salisbury Plain occupy the upper end of survival estimates for open-nesting, Palearctic migrants (0.25-0.53; Boddy 1994, Siriwardena et al 1998, Low et al 2010, Sim et al 2011, especially for adult male survival. Female apparent survival tends to be lower than in males in most studies above (Müller et al 2005, Low et al 2010, Sim et al 2011) due to incubation mortality, higher physiological demands for parental care (Gustafsson and Pärt 1990), or lower site fidelity (Shitikov et al 2015). We could not detect a difference in male and female site fidelity in our analysis here but we were restricted to a small sample size (37), and would not have included birds that returned outside our study area.…”

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“…Further, because unsuccessful breeders disperse more frequently than successful ones (Haas 1998, Sedgwick 2004, Schaub and Von Hirschheydt 2009, Shitikov et al 2015 in passerines, another possibility might be that bled Field Sparrows were reproductively more successful for some reason and, hence, returned to the site at a higher rate than unbled individuals. Finally, while we found no difference in within-year female site fidelity, our results suggest that males sampled for blood had higher withinyear site fidelity.…”

Nestling diet optimization and condition in relation to prey attributes and breeding patch size in a patch-resident insectivorous passerine: an optimal continuum and habitat constraints

“…mostly during the migratory and breeding stages; overwintering conditions thus exert a minimal influence on the survival of this declining species (Blackburn and Cresswell 2016). As a result of the socioeconomic transformation of agriculture and resulting land abandonment in Central and Eastern Europe in the last 20-30 years, Whinchats have successfully recolonized abandoned crop fields and its populations have increased considerably in certain areas (Orłowski 2004(Orłowski , 2005Tryjanowski et al 2009;Sanderson et al 2013;Shitikov et al 2015).…”