Wild Birds’ Vigilance Behavior Under Human Disturbance

The intensified human activities in modern society have been placing substantial pressure on environment as well as wild animals that live in the habitat. As a result, the wild birds, which are usually sensitive to the environment change, have their population drifted along the environment change, and adjusted their behavioral strategies to reduce the negative effects by increasing human disturbance. The vigilance behavior is a good indicator reflecting the birds’adjustment to human disturbance, because it’s the direct response to human disturbance which could be seen as a potential predation risk. This paper discussed how wild birds adjust vigilance behavior and vigilance strategy to adapt to a human-disturbed environment. The research consist of two parts:1. the research on the Alert Distance (AD) and Flush Initiation Distance (FID) of three snowfinch species distributing along Qinghai-Tibet Railway and highway;2. the analysis on the vigilance strategies of wintering family flocks of red-crowned crane and common crane in Yancheng National Reserve. Our research finds:1. The AD and FID dropped significantly with the increasing human disturbance, while larger species had longer AD and FID;2. The wintering red-crowned crane and common crane family flock adopted different vigilance strategies according to different habitat and human disturbance level:the common crane family flocks which lived mainly in the highly disturbed buffer zone tended to adopt coordinated alternative group vigilance, whereas the red-crowned crane family flocks in buffer zone didn’t show significant tendency on synchrony while those in core zone which had low human disturbance showed significant synchronized group vigilance. Our research suggests that wild birds would adjust their vigilance on individual level and flock level in response to human disturbance:on individual level, the birds would reduce their AD and FID due to habituation; while on flock level, the birds would adopt different vigilance strategies of synchronization or alternation. Both adjustments would help to reduce the negative effect by human disturbance and improve the suitability in the environment.