The duration of urbanization influences avian escape behaviour

Abstract

The increasing pace and scale of urbanization may have a significant impact on the birds that live within it, forcing them to adapt their behaviour to cope with the opportunities and challenges of urbanization. Understanding the impact of urbanization on bird behaviour and the process of behaviour adaptation to human disturbance is crucial for conservation and management of urban-dwelling birds. It also helps to further understand how wildlife responds to human-induced environmental changes and promotes the coexistence of wildlife and human beings. In this study, we selected urban areas with significant different initiation times of urbanization as research sites, and flight initiation distance (FID) was observed for common ground-foraging birds in these cities. The results showed that the duration of urbanization significantly affected the FIDs of birds to human in cities. Birds living in areas with longer periods of urbanization were more tolerant to human disturbance. Our study suggests that the duration of urbanization has an important influence on the escape behavior of birds to human disturbance.