Main content

Home

Menu

Loading wiki pages...

View
Wiki Version:
Grazing by large herbivores is increasingly used as a management tool in European nature reserves. The aim is usually to support an open but heterogeneous habitat and its corresponding plant and animal communities. Previous studies showed that birds may profit from grazing but that the effect varies among bird species. Such studies often compared bird counts among grazed areas with different stocking rates of herbivores. Here, we investigated how space use of Konik horses and Highland cattle is related to bird counts in a recently restored conservation area with a year-round natural grazing management. We equipped five horses and five cattle with GPS collars and correlated the density of their GPS positions on the grazed area with the density of bird observations from winter through the breeding season. We found that in the songbirds of our study site, both the overall density of bird individuals and the number of species increased with increasing density of GPS positions of grazers. Correlations of bird density with horse density were similar to correlations with cattle density. Of the eight most common songbird species observed in our study area, the Eurasian Skylark and the Common Starling had the clearest positive correlations with grazer density, while the Blackbird showed a negative correlation. Skylarks and Starlings in our study area thus seem to profit from year-round natural grazing by a mixed group of horses and cattle.
OSF does not support the use of Internet Explorer. For optimal performance, please switch to another browser.
Accept
This website relies on cookies to help provide a better user experience. By clicking Accept or continuing to use the site, you agree. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and information on cookie use.
Accept
×

Start managing your projects on the OSF today.

Free and easy to use, the Open Science Framework supports the entire research lifecycle: planning, execution, reporting, archiving, and discovery.