Abstract
Increasing urbanisation is detrimental for some animal species and potentially advantageous for others. Urban-nesting populations of gulls have undergone rapid population increases worldwide, which has resulted in an increase in human-gull conflicts. In order to inform management and conservation decisions in relation to these populations, more information is needed about the behaviour of these birds in urban settings and how they utilise their environment. This study combined Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking data of 12 urban-nesting lesser black-backed gulls, Larus fuscus, with habitat and behaviour data over three breeding seasons (2016–2018). Despite the proximity of marine areas (~10 km), the birds only made significant use of terrestrial environments, spending two-thirds of their time away from the nest in suburban and urban areas, and one-third in rural green areas. The gulls utilised suburban and urban areas more as their chicks grew and appeared to use diverse foraging strategies to suit different habitats. These results indicate that the range of potential foraging areas available needs to be considered in management decisions and that urban bird populations may not use the resources they are expected to.
Highlights
Urbanisation of the landscape affects animal populations worldwide and often results in lower species diversity and richness[1,2]
United Kingdom (UK) found that the gulls had highly variable individual home-range sizes and activity patterns, and that the birds spent a considerable amount of time away from suburban and urban areas, visiting both marine and agricultural habitats[16]
This species is amber listed in the UK and their overall population in the UK decreased by 48% from approximately 91,300 to 43,824 apparently occupied nests (AON) between 2000 and 20137,9
Summary
Urbanisation of the landscape affects animal populations worldwide and often results in lower species diversity and richness[1,2]. A range of different non-lethal and lethal control measures have been proposed to control urban gull populations such as removal of access to food resources, frightening devices, netting over roof tops, removing nests and egg oiling[5,17]. Some of these are effective locally and temporarily, they are not on a larger scale[17]. We expected systematic changes in habitat use and time-activity budgets relating to the breeding stage of the gulls based on dietary and foraging behavioural changes observed in previous studies[10,20,21,22,23]. The tracking data were combined with behavioural data, breeding status and habitat data to quantify the habitat use and time-activity budgets of these urban-nesting gulls
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