TY - JOUR A1 - Arbeiter, Susanne A1 - Tegetmeyer, Cosima T1 - Home range and habitat use by aquatic warblers acrocephalus paludicola on their wintering grounds in Northwestern Senegal JF - Acta ornithologica N2 - The Aquatic Warbler Acrocephalus paludicola was once a common breeding bird in mesotrophic fen mires all over Central and Western Europe. In the last century large parts of its habitat have been destroyed by wetland drainage and agricultural intensification. Besides protecting the remaining breeding habitats, it is of great importance to preserve suitable migration stopover habitats and wintering grounds to avert the extinction of the species. We determined home-range size and the use of vegetation associations of Aquatic Warblers on the wintering grounds in a flooded plain north of the Djoudj National Park in Senegal. Individual birds (11) were caught in mist nets and equipped with radio transmitters. Locations were assessed by radiotelemetry and a compositional analysis was conducted to determine which vegetation types were preferred within home ranges. Similar to their behaviour on the breeding grounds, the Aquatic Warblers showed no territorial behaviour in their winter quarters. They used home ranges that averaged 4 ha in size, which they shared with conspecifics and other warblers. The home ranges overlapped 54% on average, with a maximum of 90% in an area used by four individuals. The vegetation structure of the wintering habitat is similar to breeding grounds and stopover sites of the species. Preferential vegetation had 80% to 100% cover and consisted of 60 to 90 cm high stands of Oryza longistaminata, Scirpus maritimus or Eleocharis mutata. Most birds stayed more often near the edge of open water, probably for foraging. A constant inundation seems essential, because Aquatic Warblers never occurred in desiccated parts of the study site. KW - Acrocephalus paludicola KW - Djoudj National Park KW - radio telemetry KW - transsaharan migrant KW - vegetation structure Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3161/000164511X625883 SN - 0001-6454 VL - 46 IS - 2 SP - 117 EP - 126 PB - Museum and Institute of Zoology, Polish Academy of Sciences CY - Warsaw ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tegetmeyer, Cosima A1 - Thoma, Marco A1 - Arbeiter, Susanne T1 - Moult and mobility of the Aquatic Warbler Acrocephalus paludicola on the West African non-breeding grounds JF - Journal of ornithology N2 - The globally threatened Aquatic Warbler Acrocephalus paludicola is a Palearctic-African long-distance migrant that undergoes a complete moult while wintering in Africa. Little is known about the timing of moult and the birds' mobility during moulting periods. We conducted the first study on the moult of Aquatic Warblers, in the Djoudj area of Senegal, West Africa. Wing moult scores from 36 to 90 and raggedness scores from 0 to 25 were recorded in December and January. No moulting Aquatic Warblers were caught after January. Body-feather moult was observed during and shortly after wing moult until January. We conclude that Aquatic Warblers follow the typical sequence of passerine moult, with remige moult starting in October or November. To find out how moult affects their mobility, we measured the net distance that Aquatic Warblers equipped with radio transmitters travelled in 15-min intervals. In our small sample of eight birds, the mean path length was 34 m, and there was no obvious difference between the path lengths in moulting and non-moulting individuals. We conclude that, possibly, moult does not affect the mobility and flight ability of Aquatic Warblers in general. Further research is needed to locate other wintering grounds, e.g. in the Inner Niger Delta, and reproduce our study in other populations. KW - Aquatic Warbler KW - Remige moult KW - Body feather moult KW - Long-distance migrant KW - Sahel KW - Non-breeding area Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-012-0833-3 SN - 0021-8375 VL - 153 IS - 4 SP - 1045 EP - 1051 PB - Springer CY - New York ER -