The Influence Of Age, Flock Size, Habitat And Weather On The Time Budget And Daily Rhythm Of Wintering Siberian Cranes In Poyang Lake

From January to March in2012and from December of2012to March of2013,we used instantaneous scanning sampling method to observe the wintering behaviorof Siberian crane wintering in the Poyang Lake National Nature Reserve, and weanalyzed the effect of age, flock size, habitat and weather on the wintering behavior ofSiberian crane. The results showed that the main behavior types of wintering SiberianCrane included feeding, vigilance, locomotion, grooming, resting, and fighting.Siberian cranes spent81.1%of its daily time in feeding,13.1%in vigilance,3.8%ingrooming,1.7%in locomotion,0.2%in resting, and0.1%in fighting. Siberian cranesignificantly showed a daily rhythm in feeding, locomotion, resting and fighting, butno significant rhythm in vigilance and grooming behaviors. As to the feeding,locomotion and fighting behaviors, there was a peak in every day morning andafternoon respectively, while resting behavioral presented a peak in the middle of theday.The daily time budget of wintering Siberian cranes was significantly influencedby age, flock size, weather, and habitat. The juveniles used significantly more time infeeding and less time in vigilance than the adults; Siberian crane in flocks spentsignificantly more time in feeding, significantly less time in vigilance, andsignificantly more time in fighting than the individuals in a family; In sunny days,Siberian crane spent significantly more time in vigilance and less time in feeding thanthat in cloudy days; Siberian crane significantly spent more time in grooming inwindy days, and significantly used more time in feeding and less time in vigilance infoggy days. There was no significant difference between the time investment infeeding and vigilance of Siberian crane in grassland habitat and on the shoal habitat,which may be correlated with the fact that these two types of habitat were neighboringand Siberian crane was confronted with the same degree of human disturbance inthese habitats. However, Siberian crane showed significant different time investmentin grooming and locomotion in grassland habitat and on the shoal habitat. The GLManalysis results revealed that there was significant interaction effect between age andflock size, age and habitat, flock size and weather, flock size and habitat, weather andhabitat on the daily time budget of Siberian crane. Spearman correlation analysisresults show that the crane vigilance behavior and foraging behavior exists significant negative correlation, vigilance behavior and grooming behavior exists significantpositive correlation.