You are here:
FACTORS AFFECTING TIME-ACTIVITY BUDGETS OF BUFFLEHEAD WINTERING IN NARRAGANSETT, BAY, RI
Citation:
McKinney, R A. AND S. R. McWilliams. FACTORS AFFECTING TIME-ACTIVITY BUDGETS OF BUFFLEHEAD WINTERING IN NARRAGANSETT, BAY, RI. Presented at 10th Annual Conference of the Wild Life Society, Burlington, VT, September 6-10/2003.
Description:
Daily activities of wintering waterfowl can be influenced by the physical environment and by habitat factors such as prey abundance and availability. We examined variability in diurnal activity budgets of Bufflehead (Bucephala albeola) wintering at seven locations within Narragansett Bay, RI (USA). Activity budgets were collected during the winter of 2001-2002 using focal-animal sampling with activities segregated into the categories feeding, maintenance, locomotion, resting, and social behaviors. Overall, Bufflehead spent 71.5 % of their time feeding and 1.52% performing social behaviors such as courtship and aggression. The remaining time was equally divided between maintenance, locomotion, and resting. Females spent 3.8% more time feeding than males. We saw a significant increase in feeding activity at the sites with increasing wind speed (r = 0.85, p = 0.01) and wave height (r = 0.93, p = 0.001) when data was averaged from all sampling sessions by site. There were also trends, although not significant, between feeding activity and time of day (r = 0.64), cloud cover (r = -0.58), and tide height (r = -0.54). At several of the sites, Bufflehead showed a cyclical feeding pattern with feeding bouts of approximately 20 minutes followed by 5 ? 10 minutes of rest or maintenance activities. Increased time spent feeding resulted in a significant decrease in time spent in social behaviors (r = 0.82, p = 0.02), suggesting that the need to feed more extensively decreases the available time for courtship and other social behaviors. Consideration should be given to physical and environmental variables when designing sampling schemes if activity budget measurements are to be useful in assessing habitat factors that influence waterfowl-habitat interactions.