466 SHORT COMMUNICATIONS VOL. 39, NO. 4 621 in I.G. Priede and S.M. Swift [EDS.], Wildlife te- MEYBURG, B.-U., X. EICHAKER, C. MEYBURG, AND P. PAI- lemetry: remote monitoring and trackingof animals. LLAT. 1995a. Migrations of an adult Spotted Eagle Ellis Horwood Ltd., New York, NY U.S.A. trackedby satellite.Brit. Birds88:357-361. BLOOM,P.H. 1987. Capturingand handling raptors.Pag- --, C. MEY•U}•G,AND J. M•HES. 2006. Annual cycle, es 99-123 in B.A.G. Pendleton, B.A. Millsap, K.W. timing and speed of migration of a pair of Lesser Cline, and D.M. Bird [EDS.], Raptor management SpottedEagles (Aquila pomarina) tracked by satellite. techniques manual. National Wildlife Federation, J. Ornithol.In press. Washington,DC U.S.A. MIZERA, T., G. MACIOROWSKI,AND B.-U. MEYBURG.2001. B}tOWN,L. )d,•DD. AMADON.1968. Eagles,hawks and Fal- [Aquila clanga(Pallas, 1811) Greater Spotted Eagle] cons of the world. Vol. 1. Country Life Books,Felt- Pages 145-148 in Z. 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Hancock House and WWGBP, catching Marsh Hawks. Proc.Int. Ornithol.Cong• 13: Berlin, Germany. 866-869. REAL,J., S. MA•OSA,AND J. CODINA.1998. Post-nestling IrANov, A.I., E.V. KozI•ov^ E.V., L.A. PORTENKO,AND A.Y. dependenceperiod in the Bonelli'sEagle (Hieraaetus TUG•mNOV. 1951. Birds of Soviet Union. Vol. 1. Iz- fasciams).Ornis Fennica 75:129-137. datelstvo Akademi Nauk SSSR, Moscow, Russia. (In Russian). Received24 November 2003; accepted5 September2005 J RaptorRes. 39(4):466-471 ¸ 2005 The Raptor ResearchFoundation, Inc. SEASONALP^TTEm'qS OF COMMONBUZZ•mD (BUTEO BUTEO) P•tATtV• ABUNDANCEAND BEH•VIO}•IN POLLINO NATIONAL PARK, ITALY MASSIMOPANDOLFI, ALESSANDRO TANFERNA, AND GIORGIAGAIBANI 1 Istitutodi Zoologia,Universitd di Urbino,via Oddi 21, 61029 Urbino,Italy KEY WORDS: CommonBuzzard; Buteo buteo; relative abun- though roadside surveyshave well-known limitations dance;roadside surveys. (e.g.,Andersen et al. 1985,Fuller and Mosher1987, Mill- sapand LeFranc1988, Vifiuela 1997), theyremain a use- Nest-site selection and habitat use have been described ful techniquefor monitoringlocal abundanceand distri- •n the Common Buzzard (Buteobuteo) by severalauthors bution of raptors (Fuller and Mosher 1987, Ellis et al. (e.g., Penterianiand Faivre 1997, Krfiger 2002, L6hmus 1990). Becauseroadside surveys are easyto conduct,they 2003, Bustamanteand Seoane 2004, Sergio et al. 2005), can be carried out at frequent intervals.Here, we present but few studies have documented annual variations in the resultsfrom monthly roadside surveysof Common Buz- abundance and habitat associationsof this species(Meu- zards.Using thesedata, we examine habitat associations, nier et al. 2000). describeseasonal patterns of Common Buzzardbehavior We conducted monthly roadside surveysof Common and abundance and, in particular, discussthe effective- Buzzards in a mountainous area of southern Italy. A1- ness of roadside surveysto monitor changes in abun- dance. 1 Present addressand correspondingauthor: Museo di METHODS Storia Naturale, Dipartimento di Biologia Evolutiva e Funzionale, Universit•t di Parma, Via Farini 90, 43100 The Common Buzzard (hereafter buzzard) surveyswere Parma, Italy; e-mail address:[email protected]. it conductedfrom October2000-September 2001 in Polhno DECEMBER2005 S•4ORT COMMUNICATIONS 467 transects Pollino National Park I ! % .,, J ß 1 I ! l* 0,0 4,0 km I I I Figure 1. Locationsof sevenroutes (thick dark lines) usedfor roadsidesurveys in PollinoNational Park, southern Italy, in 2000-01 (thin lines indicate the boundaries). National Park (39ø58'N, 16ø08'E), a 1821 km9 area located and only on calm and cleardays. We did not sampleon in the southernItalian Apennines(Fig. 1). The elevation dayswith snow,rain, fog, or strongwinds. Each month, rangesfrom 170-2266m. The land usesinclude farmlands the routeswere surveyedover 4 d by meansof two cars, and oak woods( Quercusilex, Q. pubescens,Q. cerris)in the each one with a driver and two observers.All surveys northern sectionof the park and grasslandand beech were conductedin the morning (0900-1200 H), typically woods (Fagussylvatica) in the southernportion. Over the the best time to count raptors (Robbins1981). We drove studyperiod, the mean monthly temperaturewas 14.5øC, at a speed of 40-45 km/hr and stopped the car to con- wtth a mean of 28.8øCduring July-September and 9.7øC firm each sighting. For each buzzard detected, we re- during October-February.The annual rainfall in the 12 corded if it was flying or perched and if it was alone or mo of the surveywas 841 mm. with other buzzards.Also, we discountedany buzzard that We surveyedbuzzards along seven paved roads (Fig. 1) may haverepresented a re-sightedbird. selectedrandomly with restrictions(Caughley and Sin- We calculated the relative abundance as the number clair 1994). Specifically,we rejected routes adjoining of buzzardsseen per 100 km sampled.For abundance thoseroads previously chosen. Each road wassurveyed computationswe excludedthe stretchesof roadslined by once each mo, during the third or fourth wk of the mo trees within tunnels, forests,or villages.Therefore, al- 468 SHORT COMMUNICATIONS VOL. 39, NO. 4 Table 1. Number of Common Buzzardsrecorded along seven routes in Pollino National Park (southern Italy, 2000-01). For computation of relative abundance, we used the surveylength obtained discountingthe stretch- es of roads lined by trees or passingthrough tunnels, forests, or villages. SURVEY LENGTH LENGTH MONTHLY MF&N (km) oF (km) OF -+SD OF ROUTES ROUTES ROUTES RELATIVE ABUNDANCE i 57.8 40.4 11.2 + 1.8 2 18.3 18.3 10.2 q- 2.0 3 44.4 28.9 6.7 q- 2.0 4 47.3 34.0 12.7 --+ 2.7 5 38.5 38.3 7.7 + 1.6 6 43.8 24.2 20.1 +-- 5.7 7 65.1 53.6 9.3 +---1.2 though the total road length was 315.2 km, we consid- ered for analysisonly 237.6 km (surveykm in Table 1). For the analysisof buzzard habitat associations,we re- ported the sightingsas presence/absencein a 1 X 1 km UTM grid. We created a 1 km buffer on both sides of each route and we considered only buzzards observed inside this buffer. We analyzed the habitat associations within this buffer using the Corine Land Cover 1:100000 digital map (Legend level 3, Ministero dell'Ambiente e del Territorio--Ente Parco), identifying 10 land cover typeswhich we then pooled into four general vegetation cover types: (1) arable land (cultivatedareas regularly plowed and generallyunder a rotation system),(2) het- erogeneousagricultural areas (areasprincipally occupied by agriculture, interspersedwith natural areas), (3) for- ests, and (4) shrub or herbaceous vegetation (Table 2). In each 1 X 1 km grid cellsor portions of a cell included inside the buffer, we calculated the surface of each cover type by means of a GeographicalInformation System (GIS) analysis (Geomedia Professional 2002). Buzzard habitat associationswere analyzedin four periods:Feb- ruary-April (courtship), May-July (incubation and nest- ing), August-September(post-fiedging), and October- January (winter). Although observers recorded the number of individual buzzardssighted, we only consid- ered their presence/absencein each grid cell. We used the Friedman repeated measuresanalysis of variance (F,.)to detectany difference in the relativeabun- dance among months and among periods. Using the same test, we evaluated if the number of flying or perched buzzardsvaried among months or periods. We used the Kruskal-Wallistest to detect any difference in the relative abundance among routes and the Mann- Whitney U test to ascertainwhether flying buzzardswere observed more frequently than perched buzzards.We used the arcsin-transfor•nationto convertthe proportion of sightingscomposed of buzzard groups. The Kolmo- gorov-Smirnovone-sample test (Z) was used to examine if the distribution of relative frequencieswas uniform. Finally, we used a stepwiselogistic regressionto deter- DECEMBER 2005 SHORT COMMUNICATIONS 469 4O ß Groupedand SingleBuzzards [] SingleBuzzards -•. 30 o• 25 • 20 •: •5 T • • • T • 10 • 5 o Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Figure 2. Monthly mean _+SDof the relative abundanceof Common Buzzardsrecorded along sevenroutes in Pollino National Park, southern Italy (2000-01). The dark columns show the relative abundancecalculated consid- ering both groupedand singleindividuals; the white columnsare the relativeabundance calculated based on single individualsonly. mine whether the probability of detecting buzzardsvar- Most buzzardsdetected (67.4%, N = 221) were alone, ied among the four cover typesin each of the periods. while 23.2% (N = 76) were paired and 9.4% (N = 31) Means are presented +SD. The nonparametric testswere were in larger groups, with a mean group size of 3.9 __+ from Siegel and Castellan (1988), and the logistic re- 0.6 individuals.The proportion of sightingscomposed of gressionanalysis followed Field (2000). All of the statis- tical testswere performed with SPSS10.0 (SPSS2000). a group of buzzards showed a uniform distribution throughout the year, ranging from 0.4 in July to 0.0 in RESULTS January (z = 1.5; N = 12; P > 0.05).