Habitat Selection And Behavior Of Tibetan Partridge Perdix Hodgsoniae In Daocheng, Sichuan

Tibetan partridge Perdix perdix is endemic to the Tibetan plateau and widespread throughout the plateau. They usually live in the alpine meadow and shrub at 3600～4250 m. The fieldwork on Tibetan partridge habitat selection and behavior was carried out from June 2008 to August 2010 in Daocheng County, Sichuan Province in southwest China.The investigations for habitat selection were conducted in spring, summer and winter. The result suggests that Tibetan partridge have more frequent selection on shrubs., which are composed by variety of deciduous shrubs and had lower coverage of vegetation. Logistic regression and AIC was used on the creation and selection of habitat selection model. The model suggested that the partridges preferred the area which was gradual and close to road in spring.They avoided disturbances in summer and they selected the habiat more frequently which was nearby resident and base in winter. Stepwise discriminant was used to compare the difference amony seasons. The main factors of discriminant the Tibetan partridge habitat amony seasons were slope degree, distance to road and the coverage of herb and shrub. Be different from other seasons, in spring, the Tibetan partridge stayed in the areas with higher elevation and farther from road. The coverage and height of herb in summer was highest. The winter habitat was closer to road. Food and safety might be the reasons that above phenomenas produce.Tibetan partridge usually roosted in Dense Rhododenclron scrub was used by partridges as night roost sites, which is possibly good for saving energy and being protected from predation. Most of the time they moved fast to night roost sites 10.3±1.6 min (n= 7) later after sunset in wintering. The night sites were repeatedly used.The diurnal behavior was observed in late wintering with instantaneous scan sampling method. They spent most of the day time on feeding (69.31%±2.33%), followed by resting (20.06%±2.26%), guarding (7.10%±0.71%) and moving (3.53%±0.47%). There were two peaks during the feeding time. One was from 11:00 to 14:00; the other was from 15:00 to 17:00. Feeding behavior was seldom happened in the early morning, dusk and midday from 14:00 to 15:00. Rhythm of resting was nearly opposite to that of feeding-with two peaks in early morning and dusk.Guarding behavior was more frequently observed at 14:00 to 15:00 during the day. Moving activity did not change obviously throughout a day. The Tibetan partridge has territorial and hierarchial behavior. Mating behavior normally happened in the morning or midday (n= 5), and the first record was on March 22nd. Couples appeared within group in late wintering. The group gradually broke up from the end of March.The group size had significant seasonal variation(x2= 79.168, P< 0.001, n= 323). The largest occurred in January to March(11.39±0.97,n=41).July and August had moderate group size(3.26±0.38,n=86).In May the group size shrunk to the lowest level(1.78士0.05,n=116).It in pre-breeding was smallest.