Nestlings’ Behavioral Development Of Little Grebe(tachybaptus Ruficollis) In Hulan River Estuary

Scan sampling and focal animal sampling methods are used to observe and record nestlings’ behavior and parental feeding behavior of little grebe(tachybaptus ruficollis) in Hulan River Estuary during May to July in 2013 and 2014. The paper studied behavior percentage and nestlings’ behavioral development of tachybaptus ruficollis at the first three stages of brooding period. The trend of behavior intensity of the tachybaptus ruficollis at different growth stages was analyzed, and the relationship between parental feeding behavior and nestlings’ behavior at different day-old and during different begging intensity was discussed.The result showed that behaviors of tachybaptus ruficollis can be classified into 13 types, including resting, pecking, swimming, crawling, imitation, watching, foraging and food begging, standing, diving, tweeting, interacting, competing and miscellaneous behavior. There was significant difference(P<0.05) in time allocation of the various behavior at different growth stages of tachybaptus ruficollis. Especially, there is significant difference(P<0.01) in time allocation among resting, preening, swimming, diving, interacting, crawling and foraging behavior.Generally, males was mainly responsible for feeding and they fed nestlings more than female do. The feeding frequency at different stages varied a lot: the feeding frequency of both males and females at the first and second stage is apparently higher than that at the third stage. And there is significance difference in the feeding frequency of parents at the first and third stage, and the second and third stage respectively.Food distribution strategy of parents was influenced by different day-old of nestlings. In some occasions, females prefered to feed nestlings with shorter day-old and males tend to feed nestlings with longer day-old. While in other occasions, both the female and male birds tend to feed nestlings with longer day-old.With the increase of day-old, the nestlings develop more behavior and change of intensity is relatively obvious. With the increase of day-old and intensity of begging, the nestlings got greater chance to obtain more food. The intensity of begging was the biggest at the second stage and the smallest at the third stage.