Territoriality is a behaviour that has evolved to secure resources for survival and reproduction. We know very little about how individuals become territorial, and such information may be important in release programs for threatened species. In this paper I study the establishment of a territory and the habitat choice of captive-raised tawny owls, a year-round territorial bird of prey. The aim is to find out how fast these naïve tawny owls claim their own territory and what type of environment they most likely do establish territory within. In total 19 tawny owls were released, four of these owls were equipped with remote downloading GPS loggers attached as backpacks to study their habitat choice and explorative behaviour. My results suggest that 82 % of the owls successfully establish territory on average 22 days after the release. I was not able to download data from the GPS loggers with the downloading station, which is most likely due to the GPS signal having difficulties traveling through the closed forest which is interfering with the signal. This indicates that this type of automatic downloading GPS is not suitable for this type of forest-dwelling species. A large proportion of the owls became territorial very fast after they have been released, showing strong territoriality instinct in these naive individuals. This may suggest that released naïve tawny owls can successfully claim a territory and thereby contribute to the pool of reproductive individuals.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-460792 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Eriksson, Emil |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för biologisk grundutbildning |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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