Circadian preferences of birdwatchers in Poland: do "owls" prefer watching night birds, and "larks" prefer daytime ones?

Martyna Frątczak,Piotr Tryjanowski,Christoph Randler,Tim H Sparks

doi:10.7717/peerj.8673

Martyna Frątczak, Piotr Tryjanowski + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8673

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Abstract

Birdwatching is a very popular and increasing leisure activity, and the study and observation of birds is more popular in the morning due to the greater activity among birds at that time of day. The aim of our study was to find out whether there was a relationship between the circadian preference of observers and their favourite bird species and whether it was influenced by such factors as professional status, age and gender. In an e-mail survey we asked a total of 433 Polish ornithologists (professionals) or birdwatchers (non-professionals) for their morningness–eveningness preferences (four categories) and favourite (open choice) bird species and received 143 responses. The temporal (circadian) preferences of respondents declined from early morning (35.7%) to evening/nighttime (11.4%). Circadian preference categories differed significantly by age, with early morning respondents significantly older. These preference categories did not differ significantly in terms of response time to the survey invitation or in the percentage of their favourite birds that were categorised as daytime birds. A total of 204 species were identified as favourite birds of which 34 species were mentioned by five or more respondents, with only two, the common crane Grus grus and the Eurasian pygmy owl Glaucidium passerinum mentioned by more than 10% of respondents. The white stork Ciconia ciconia was more popular with professionals than non-professionals and the swift Apus apus less popular. A significant gender × circadian preference interaction was detected for the percentage of favourite birds categorised as daytime birds, with fewer daytime birds among early morning female recorders. The presented results are obviously of a correlative nature, but open the door for further, more advanced study and suggest there may be a need to investigate temporal biases when analysing citizen-based data.

Highlights

Many factors influence human attitudes to animals, including animal traits such as colour, size, rarity and popularity and human traits such as gender, age, education level and even food preferences
Bird species differ in many ecological traits and these can affect human behaviour, for example searching for information on particular species (Żmihorski et al, 2013; Correia et al, 2016, 2017) and even willingness to pay for their conservation (Raab, Randler & Bogner, 2018)
Measuring circadian preference in this way could be criticised because it is based on a single question, but Loureiro & Garcia-Marques (2015) showed that results were rather similar, whether based on only a single question or derived from the full scale

Summary

Introduction

Many factors influence human attitudes to animals, including animal traits such as colour, size, rarity and popularity and human traits such as gender, age, education level and even food preferences (reviewed in: Prokop & Randler, 2018). In the case of bird observation, this can affect intellectual and physical peak performance during the day (Pica et al, 2015; Randler, Faßl & Kalb, 2017; Arrona-Palacios & Díaz-Morales, 2018), and punctuality (Werner, Geisler & Randler, 2015) and risk-taking (Wang & Chartrand, 2015), which can be useful in finding and watching rare birds, which is a focussed activity of some birdwatchers (Żmihorski, Sparks & Tryjanowski, 2012; Callaghan et al, 2018)

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