Vigilance and Activity Time-Budget Adjustments of Wintering Hooded Cranes, Grus monacha, in Human-Dominated Foraging Habitats

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0118928
• Publication Date: 2015-03-13T18:15:35Z
• Authors: Chunlin Li; Lizhi Zhou; Li Xu; Niannian Zhao; Guy Beauchamp
• Keywords: Vigilance (psychology); Flock; Human–wildlife conflict; Grus (genus)

Due to loss and degradation of natural wetlands, waterbirds increasingly rely on surrounding human-dominated habitats obtain food. Quantifying vigilance patterns, investigating the trade-off among various activities, examining underlying mechanisms will help us understand how adapt human-caused disturbances. During two successive winters (November-February 2012-13 2013-14), we studied hooded crane, Grus monacha, in Shengjin Lake National Nature Reserve (NNR), China, investigate species responds human disturbances through activity time-budget adjustments. Our results showed striking differences behavior cranes when foraging highly disturbed rice paddy fields found buffer zone compared with degraded wetlands core area NNR. Time spent vigilant decreased flock size more time zone. In fields, birds were but also fed at expense locomotion maintenance activities. Adult foraged less than juveniles. We recommend habitat recovery community co-management landscape for conservation crane and, generally, vast numbers migratory wintering middle lower reaches Yangtze River floodplain.