Seasonal and spatial variation of the Montagu's Harrier's Circus pygargus diet in Eastern Poland

Abstract

Capsule: The diet of the Montagu's Harrier Circus pygargus is variable and comprises the most available prey at a given time of the season. We found no evidence for a relationship between diet and land-use in the core foraging zone.Aims: We investigated whether the diet of the Montagu's Harrier reflects the available prey and how it changes across the breeding season and in relation to land-use.Methods: We analysed pellets collected at nests between 2007 and 2011. We looked for nonlinear patterns in the occurrence of prey categories in the pellets as a nonlinear function of the Julian date. Moreover, we tested whether the diet is affected by land-use within a radius of 2299 m from the nest.Results: Four thousand four hundred and sixty-five prey items were found in 880 pellets and 76 prey remains collected at 63 sites. The diet did not depend on the land-use structure but showed a significant temporal variation.Conclusions: The diet of the Montagu's Harrier follows the availability of the prey in the foraging habitat. We conclude that the type of land-use in the vicinity of the nesting habitat has a rather weak effect on the diet of the Montagu's Harrier.

Published in

Bird Study
2016, volume: 63, number: 2, pages: 165-171
Publisher: TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD

SLU Authors

• Zmihorski, Michal

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00063657.2016.1143914

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/79631