The Little Bustard Tetrax tetrax is a Near Threatened grassland bird that is fully migratory within its eastern population, wintering in large numbers across the south Caucasus and northern parts of Iran. The species’ habitat selection has been comprehensively studied in its western European range, but very limited information is available for its eastern population. Surveys carried out between 2010 and 2015 show a considerable population increase and probable range expansion in the region. We modelled the suitability of potential winter habitat for the species and found that distance to country border, land cover and altitude were the most important variables in predicting habitat suitability. There is still considerable hunting pressure in Iran and distance to border is likely to be related to strict hunting prohibition along the border belt imposed for military purposes. This represents an opportunity for the conservation of the species, where management efforts should aim at ensuring the maintenance of suitable land cover.

The Little Bustard Tetrax tetrax (Linnaeus, 1758) is a medium-sized, ‘Near Threatened’ steppe bird, whose Iberian population has been alarmingly declining over recent decades. Although this population loss has been mainly attributed to agricultural intensification, there is no information on Little Bustard adult mortality levels and their drivers. Based on a joint effort combining all the tracking data on adult Little Bustards collected over a period of 12 years by all research teams working with the species in Iberia, we found that annual anthropogenic mortality is likely to have a critical impact on the species, with values almost as high as the mortality attributed to predation. Collision with power lines was found to be the main anthropogenic threat to the adult population (3.4–3.8%/year), followed by illegal killing (2.4–3%/year), which had a higher impact than initially foreseen. Our work shows how poorly understood and previously unknown threats are affecting the survival of the most important Little Bustard population in Europe.

We investigated population productivity and habitat selection of the Little Bustard Tetrax tetrax in the late breeding period, in grassland-dominated landscapes of south-west Iberia. Specifically, our goals were to investigate how these parameters are influenced by the management of (1) grazing and (2) hay production. We conducted bird counts from 22 June to 4 July (2012 to 2016) using low speed 4x4 car surveys. The relationship between the density of the species, population productivity and farm management (grazing and haying) was evaluated using Generalized Linear Mixed Models and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Male and female densities were significantly higher in short vegetation compared to all other types of vegetation considered, but population productivity was similar in short and medium vegetation. Hay stubbles were found to be unattractive for the species. The availability of suitable habitats depends on the timing of grazing, notably of seasonal (spring) grazing. Species density was higher in fields ungrazed during winter and with moderate to high stocking rates in spring (around 0.8 LU/ha or higher), depending, at least for males and females, on each year’s weather characteristics. We conclude that low to moderate stocking rates during winter and spring are essential to ensure successful breeding and thus population persistence. Current levels of haying in our study area are detrimental for the species’ conservation.

Many shorebird populations are in decline along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. The rapid loss of coastal wetlands in the Yellow Sea, which provide critical stop-over sites during migration, is believed to be the cause of the alarming trends. The Yalu Jiang coastal wetland, a protected area in the north Yellow Sea, supports the largest known migratory staging populations of Bar-tailed Godwits Limosa lapponica (menzbieri and baueri subspecies) and Great Knots Calidris tenuirostris. Monitoring of the macrozoobenthos food for these shorebirds from 2011 to 2016 showed declines of over 99% in the densities of the bivalve Potamocorbula laevis, the major food here for both Bar-tailed Godwits and Great Knots. The loss of the bivalve might be caused by any combination of, but not limited to: (1) change in hydrological conditions and sediment composition due to nearby port construction, (2) run-off of agrochemicals from the extensive shoreline sea cucumber farms, and (3) parasitic infection. Surprisingly, the numbers of birds using the Yalu Jiang coastal wetland remained stable during the study period, except for the subspecies of Bar-tailed Godwit L. l. menzbieri, which exhibited a 91% decline in peak numbers. The lack of an overall decline in the number of bird days in Great Knots and in the peak numbers of L. l. baueri, also given the published simultaneous decreases in their annual survival, implies a lack of alternative habitats that birds could relocate to. This study highlights that food declines at staging sites could be an overlooked but important factor causing population declines of shorebirds along the Flyway. Maintaining the quality of protected staging sites is as important in shorebird conservation as is the safeguarding of staging sites from land claim. Meanwhile, it calls for immediate action to restore the food base for these beleaguered migrant shorebirds at Yalu Jiang coastal wetland.

The natural coastal wetlands of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF) are disappearing at alarming rates, leading to rapid declines of many populations of waterbirds in the most species-rich flyway in the world. The identification and assessment of possible alternative habitats that may buffer the loss of natural wetlands should, therefore, be a priority for the conservation of migratory waterbirds using this flyway. Coastal saltpans are functional wetlands that support large numbers of waterbirds worldwide. The Nanpu Saltpans in the northern Bohai Bay of the Yellow Sea in China are one of the largest (290 km2) saltpan complexes in the world. In this paper, we document the value of the Nanpu Saltpans for supporting waterbirds. The surveys, carried out from 2013 to 2016, included waterbird counts in the saltpans (93 km2) at high and low tide and on the adjacent natural tidal flats (57 km2) at low tide. Of the 89 waterbird species recorded, 27 had maximum counts exceeding the 1% threshold value of estimated flyway populations. The maximum counts of waterbirds in northward migration and southward migration in the Nanpu Saltpans were 96,000 and 93,500, respectively, including both foraging and roosting birds; these figures do not account for turnover, so the total number of birds using the site is likely to be higher. The maximum counts on the adjacent tidal flats at low tide amounted to 73,000 and 20,000 waterbirds during northward and southward migration, respectively, and most of them were foraging birds. In the boreal winter, few birds fed in the saltpans, but several thousand fed on the tidal flats. Waterbirds used the inland ponds (2.0–18.0 km from the intertidal area) mainly for feeding both during low tide and high tide and used the nearshore ponds (0.3–4.3 km from the intertidal area) mainly for high-tide roosting. Some species, such as Black-tailed Godwit Limosa limosa, Marsh Sandpiper Tringa stagnatilis, Pied Avocet Recurvirostra avosetta, and Black-winged Stilt Himantopus himantopus, occurred mainly in the saltpans; other species preferred tidal flats, such as Red Knot Calidris canutus, Great Knot Calidris tenuirostris, Bar-tailed Godwit Limosa lapponica, Eurasian Curlew Numenius arquata, Relict Gull Larus relictus, and Grey Plover Pluvialis squatarola. This study clearly demonstrates the joint ecological function of the Nanpu Saltpan complex and adjacent tidal flats as a key staging area for waterbirds in the EAAF, and as such both urgently warrant protected status.

Camera trap surveys are a non-invasive way to monitor wildlife populations. Although most often used to study medium- and large-sized mammals, camera traps also detect non-target species. These detections provide useful ecological information on little-known species, but such data usually remain unanalysed. We used detections from camera-trapping surveys of native carnivores and small mammals to examine distribution patterns and occupancy trends of little-known ground-dwelling rainforest birds at seven sites across the Masoala-Makira protected area complex in north-eastern Madagascar. We obtained 4,083 detections of 28 bird species over 18,056 trap nights from 200 to 2013. We estimated occupancy across the Masoala-Makira protected area complex (hereafter, landscape occupancy) and annual trends in occupancy at three resurveyed sites for five commonly observed species. Landscape occupancy across Masoala-Makira ranged from 0.75 (SE 0.09; Madagascar Magpie-robin Copsychus albospecularis) to 0.25 (SE 0.06; Scaly Ground-roller Geobiastes squamiger). Ground-dwelling forest bird occupancy was similar at forest sites that ranged from intact to fully degraded; however, three species were detected less often at sites with high feral cat trap success. Nearly half of all focal species showed declines in annual occupancy probability at one resurveyed site (S02) from 2008 to 2013. The declines in ground-dwelling bird occupancy could have community-wide consequences as birds provide ecosystem services such as seed dispersal and pest regulation. We suggest immediate conservation measures—such as feral cat removal—be implemented to protect ground-dwelling forest birds and other threatened taxa across this landscape.

Knowledge of a species’ potential distribution and the suitability of available habitat are fundamental for effective conservation planning and management. However, the quality of information on the distribution of species and their required habitats is highly variable in terms of accuracy and availability across taxa and regions, particularly in tropical landscapes where accessibility is especially challenging. Species distribution models (SDMs) provide predictive tools for addressing gaps for poorly surveyed species, but they rarely consider biases in geographical distribution of records and their consequences. We applied SDMs and variation partitioning analyses to investigate the relative importance of habitat characteristics, human accessibility, and their joint effects in the global distribution of the Critically Endangered Blue-throated Macaw Ara glaucogularis, a species endemic to the Amazonian flooded savannas of Bolivia. The probability of occurrence was skewed towards more accessible areas, mostly secondary roads. Variability in observed occurrence patterns was mostly accounted for by the pure effect of habitat characteristics (76.2%), indicating that bias in the geographical distribution of occurrences does not invalidate species-habitat relationships derived from niche models. However, observed spatial covariation between land-use at a landscape scale and accessibility (joint contribution: 22.3%) may confound the independent role of land-use in the species distribution. New surveys should prioritise collecting data in more remote (less accessible) areas better distributed with respect to land-use composition at a landscape scale. Our results encourage wider application of partitioning methods to quantify the extent of sampling bias in datasets used in habitat modelling for a better understanding of species-habitat relationships, and add insights into the potential distribution of our study species and opportunities for its conservation.

Bird migration studies are sparse in the Caucasus region, but have received more interest in recent years. To date, these studies have focused on diurnal migration and no information about nocturnal bird migration is available from this region. Therefore, nocturnal bird migration in the Besh Barmag bottleneck (Azerbaijan) was acoustically analysed on the basis of 1,464 h 44 min of sound recordings cost-efficiently obtained with an autonomously operating recorder and an omnidirectional microphone between sunset and sunrise on 63 nights in autumn 2011 and 67 nights in spring 2012. In total, 88,455 calls of 106 migrating species were detected. Of these, 2,172 calls could not be identified due to recording deficiencies or imperfect familiarity with some of the vocalisations and may involve as many as 20 species. The calls and songs of another 13 non-migratory species were not counted. Due to organisational or technical constraints some nights in the study periods could not be analysed and so the ensuing data gaps were repaired by interpolation, resulting in an estimated total of 108,986 calls in autumn 2011 and 33,348 calls in spring 2012. In both seasons the most vocally productive and species-rich phase was civil morning twilight, containing as it does the onset of diurnal migration. In autumn 2011, 54.7% of the recorded calls occurred in civil evening and morning twilight and 68.8% in spring 2012. But species and call numbers were also high in the darkest twilight and night phases. The interpretation of the data is, however, partly conjectural and any future access to truly reliable information on migration densities is conceivable only through radar studies.

We studied the breeding biology of Tahiti Monarch Pomarea nigra, a ‘Critically Endangered’ forest bird endemic to Tahiti (French Polynesia). Nest activity was monitored from 1998 to 2002, and again from 2008 to 2015. During these 12 years, only 2–13 breeding pairs per year produced hatchlings. Egg-laying occurred all year, but usually increased between August and January, peaking around November. Of the 200 nests monitored, 33 (16%) were abandoned shortly after construction, 71 had an egg laid immediately after the nest were completed (34 %) and 96 nests (46 %) had a pre-incubation phase of 18.9 ± 1.9 days (3–62 days; n = 47 nests), during which the birds visited the nest on an irregular basis. Half (49 of 96) of these nests were abandoned before an egg was laid, with incubation subsequently commencing at the remaining nests (n = 47). Although both sexes incubated for an average of 13.6 ± 0.3 days (range 13–15), the female usually spent more time incubating than the male. Only one young per nest was ever observed. The average nestling phase was 15.5 ± 0.7 days (range 13 to 20 days). Parents continue to feed the young after fledging for 74 ± 4.7 days (range 42–174). As with many tropical island endemics, the Tahiti Monarch has low reproductive productivity as indicated by the fact that: 1) only 56% of pairs attempt to lay an egg in any one year, 2) most pairs attempt only one brood per year and 3) the considerable length of the nesting and fledging phases. Because of its low productivity, maximising the reproductive success of the Tahiti Monarch is essential to secure its recovery.

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) rigorously collected in four Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) of Samoa provided conservation and ecological insights about the endemic and evolutionarily distinctive Tooth-billed Pigeon Didunculus strigirostris. This study confirmed the 2006 estimate of a sharply declining population, supporting the recent conservation status assessment of Critically Endangered. Birds are killed as bycatch during hunting for the sympatric Pacific Pigeon Ducula pacifica, suggesting that this activity may be a key threat. The Tooth-billed Pigeon was observed by selected reliable indigenous hunters in several forest areas targeted in the present study, from a few months to several years ago. In the field, it was detected acoustically and identified through TEK and a mix of a TEK-scientific approach in four forest areas within three Samoan KBAs. Detection of the bird in the field is an issue due to its highly cryptic behaviour and because its call largely overlaps with one of the calls of Pacific Pigeon. Original TEK about the behavioural ecology of this species, including the fruiting trees mostly used and its terrestrial habits is reported. Short-term conservation recommendations are provided based on the findings.

Since 2010, Jankowski’s Bunting Emberiza jankowskii has been listed as ‘Endangered’ on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. However, because no comprehensive surveys had been conducted, it was not known whether undiscovered populations existed elsewhere, so the population status of the species could not be assessed accurately. The aim of this study was to assess the breeding distribution and population size of Jankowski’s Bunting in China. Fifty sites in Inner Mongolia, and Jilin, Heilongjiang, Liaoning and Hebei Provinces were surveyed to locate suitable habitat and breeding populations of Jankowski’s Bunting. The surveyed sites included historical breeding distribution areas, wintering sites, and regions adjacent to historical breeding distribution areas. We confirmed that Jankowski’s Bunting has disappeared from most of its former breeding distributions, with the exceptions of Dagang, Xiergen and Tumiji. Additionally, 13 new breeding sites were discovered in Inner Mongolia. All currently known populations breed in Mongolian steppe-vegetation zones, with shrubs dominated by the natural Siberian apricot Prunus sibirica, indicating that this type of habitat is crucial for the survival of the species. Based on remote sensing, the suitable breeding habitat for Jankowski’s Bunting is estimated to be approximately 280 km2. The population size of Jankowski’s Bunting could range between 9,800 and 12,500 individuals, which is much higher than the numbers estimated in previous reports that were based on partial surveys. The suitable habitat remaining in Inner Mongolia would highly benefit from the implementation of the National Key Public Forest Protection Project. The population size of Jankowski’s Bunting is larger than previously estimated, but it is still threatened by habitat degradation and fragmentation, and our survey results reinforce the need for more research. The status of Jankowski’s Bunting in China still meets the IUCN criteria B2ab for an ‘Endangered’ species.

The occurrence of the Black-fronted Francolin Pternistis atrifrons is restricted to a tiny area in southern Ethiopia. Based on field studies from 2012 to 2014, we modelled the range and estimated the population size of the species in order to evaluate its current conservation status. Annual mean temperature (relatively low) and precipitation (relatively high) proved to be key factors for the probability of its occurrence. The modelled range is 1,286 km2 (“extent of occurrence” according to the IUCN Red List criteria). However, only about one third of the modelled range is actually populated by the Black-fronted Francolin. This area, around 385 km2, corresponds to the IUCN’s “area of occupancy”. The total population size is estimated at 1,100 to 2,100 mature individuals. Thus, we conclude that the species should be classified as Endangered, criteria: A2c+B1ab(i,iii,v) + B2ab(i,iii,v); population trend: decreasing. This means that the Black-fronted Francolin is one of Africa’s most endangered galliforms. Major threats are range and habitat losses due to agricultural expansion, grazing pressure, commercial firewood and timber exploitation, and hunting. Furthermore, expected climate changes in south-east Ethiopia (higher temperatures, less precipitation) could further exacerbate these threats. We propose urgent conservation actions, including the extension of the currently projected Borana National Park.