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MOVEMENT AND BROODING BEHAVIOUR OF BLOOD PHEASANT (ITHAGINIS CRUENTUS) IN BROODING PERIOD

2001; Linguagem: Inglês

0001-7302

Jia Chen,

Animal Nutrition and Physiology

Blood pheasant (Ithaginis cruentus) is endemic to Qinghai\|Tibetan Plateau and mainly distributes in the high mountains of China. The hatched chicks have to depend mainly on heat from the brooding behaviour of the adult female to survive because of their limited thermoregulatory capacity. Most studies on the daily movement and brooding behaviour of Galliformes centered on the captive birds, but the information on the birds in the field remains unclear. We studied the effects of the age of chicks and ambient temperature on the duration and frequency of brooding bout, and the relationship between the daily movement and the age of chichs of broods form November 1994 to September 1995 in Wuyipeng of Wolong Nature Reserve, Sichuan Province, China. Radiotelemetry was used for following the daily movement and focal sampling method was used for observing brooding behaviour of Blood pheasant. The main results are showed as follows. \;Totally 110 brooding bouts of two females, 96 from brood No.4 and 14 from brood No.3, were observed and analyzed in this study. The duration of brooding bouts lasted 7.87±0.45 min. regardless of the age of the chicks (r=0.063,P=0.540), and tended to increase as the ambient temperature decreased but not significant (r=-0.245,P=0.016). The interval between two brooding bouts was 13.60±1.15 min. Brooding bouts tended to decrease in frequency both as the chicks grew older (r=-0.878,P0.001),exceptions occurred on cloudy, raining and cold days, and, although not significant (r=-0.439,P=0.053),as the ambient temperature increased. Brooding behaviour disappeared from the behavioral repertoire at about 40 days of age. Based on our results, we concluded that the brooding frequency of Blood pheasant was influenced by both the ambient temperature and the thermoregulatory capacity of chicks, and the brooding duration was not related with the age of chicks.\;The average distance per hour moved by broods in one day tended to increase as the chicks grew older (r=0.680,P0.001). The size of brood's home range in July (0.17 km\+2) was larger than that in June (0.15 km\+2). It is suggested that the Blood pheasant with broods appeared more mobile as the chicks grow older.