The Movement Patterns Of Elliot's Pheasant And Its Seasonal Variation

From July 2005 to December 2006, based on five Elliot's Pheasant individuals, we had studied its size of home range, dispersal, daily and seasonal vertically movement as well as their factors in Guanshan National Nature Reserve, Jiangxi Province, China, using methods of radiotelemetry, GIS, GPS and sampling. The results were as follows:(1) The average size of yearly home range was 2.75±0.85 km~2 by MCP methods and 2.79±0.98 km~2 by Fixed Kernel methods. The size of monthly home range varied from 0.105 to 0.215 km~2 by MCP methods. March and August served as the biggest and smallest in the range of movement. The overlap size of monthly home range of two neighbors varied from 0.0305 to 0.0418km~2.(2) The mean daily and maximum distance of movement of Elliot's Pheasant were about 0.2690—0.4281km and 0.3944-0.7106 km respectively, in which March and July served as the biggest and smallest in the mean daily distance of movement. The maximum daily moving distance in spring was larger than others.(3) In spring, four individuals dispersed in a duration of 17—28 days with the distance rang from 1.48km to 2.35km, while in winter, only two dispersed in a duration of 8—15 days with the distance range from 0.85km to 1.21km.(4) Elliot's pheasant preferred the areas with an elevation of 400～600 meters as its habitats in all seasons, which was about 75 percent of all areas the pheasant inhabited.(5) The elevation of its main activity areas was varied seasonally with highest in summer and lowest both in autumn and winter. The distance to source of water was a major factor on habitat use in winter. On the contrary, in spring and summer, factors associated with food and disturbance, such as distance to the habitat edge, abundance of shrub, number of shrub species and visibility degree, were more important.