Building the Full Annual Cycle Picture for Long-Billed Curlews: Correlates of Nest Success in the Breeding Grounds and Spatial Distribution and Site Fidelity in the Wintering Grounds

Abstract

The following individuals read and discussed the thesis submitted by student Stephanie E. Coates, and they evaluated her presentation and response to questions during the final oral examination. They found that the student passed the final oral examination. and lower percent cover of grasses, bare ground, and shrubs than available sites. Nestsites were six times more likely to have a cowpie within 50 cm than random sites. Higher probability of nest success was associated with higher curlew density in the nesting area, increasing percent cover of conspicuous objects such as cowpies within approximately two meters of the nest, and -surprisingly -higher densities of American Crows and Black-billed Magpies in the breeding area. In a separate analysis with a subset of nests (n = 100), we found nests had higher probability of success when they were farther from roads and perches. Given the central role of working lands to breeding curlews in much of the Intermountain West, an understanding of limitations to nesting success in these diverse landscapes is necessary to guide adaptive management strategies in increasingly human-modified habitats. Similarly, foundational understanding of winter spatial ecology is essential for understanding population declines which may be related to linkages viii between breeding and non-breeding seasons. Overall, these findings provide valuable information for full annual cycle conservation and will be particularly constructive for conservation planning once range-wide migratory connectivity is mapped.

Population trends, size, and potential threats to Bristle-thighed Curlew Numenius tahitiensis: new data from French Polynesia

“…Having only two time periods to compare numbers is not ideal, but curlews are long-lived species known to display winter site fidelity (Sanders 2017, Coates 2018, so no large year-to-year variations in numbers are expected, and so these results present a useful comparison of similar data obtained at two different time periods.…”