Daryll Marie 
doi.org
A Time and a Place for Everything: Eurasian Spoonbills Divide Spring and Summer Activities Across Different Areas in the Eastern Dutch Wadden Sea
Human activities, including resource exploitation, coastal development and tourism, are prominent threats to waterbirds. Ensuring undisturbed habitats thus remains a conservation priority, especially in densely populated areas in Europe. Eurasian Spoonbills Platalea l. leucorodia are emblematic migratory waterbirds that have shown a strong recovery in European protected areas, including the Dutch Wadden Sea that is now the species' main European stronghold. However, this recovery has stalled, and while breeding colonies are strictly protected, visual observations suggest Spoonbills shift space use throughout their summer residency period, notably after breeding, into areas that may not be adequately protected. Focusing on a major breeding area in the eastern Wadden Sea, on the island of Schiermonnikoog, we used GPS-loggers with behavioural sensors to track 31 Eurasian Spoonbills over an 11-year period to describe space use and activity budgets from May to September. Using dynamic Brownian Bridge Movement Models to describe utilization distributions (UD), we delineated four key zones for this population and described substantial changes in their home range (95% UD), vital areas (75% UD) and core areas (50% UD) throughout the breeding and post-breeding periods. Key zones differed in intensity of use and function (based on activity budgets) throughout the summer residency period. Males and females exhibited distinct space use patterns, which converged into one key zone after breeding, namely the intertidal mudflats of Lutjewad, on the coast of the province of Groningen, used for moulting, pre-migratory flight fuelling and potentially as an information and social hub. The attractiveness of Lutjewad for Spoonbills might be linked to low levels of human disturbance at this site, which could be threatened by existing plans for major infrastructure developments. Overall, Spoonbills spent much of their summer residency period outside their strictly protected colonies, in key zones that are protected as N2000-sites, National Park or Natural World Heritage sites. However, additional measures may be needed in these areas to shield Spoonbills from human disturbance for extended periods.
