Daniel Lees

BirdLife Australia

Leaving the nest early to avoid detection by an approaching predator is an often-cited form of nest defence among ground-nesting birds, yet has rarely been quantitatively demonstrated. During the breeding season, we recorded Flight-initiation Distances (FIDs) of incubating, off-duty and non-breeding Hooded Plovers Thinornis cucuallatus cucuallatus...

Context Some populations of introduced species cause significant undesirable impacts but can also act as reservoirs for genetic diversity. Sambar deer (Cervus unicolor) are ‘Vulnerable’ in their native range and invasive in Australia and New Zealand. Genetic data can be used to determine whether these introduced populations might serve as genetic r...

Variations in eye colour in birds are poorly documented. We measured and characterised eyes of 25 birds in the hand (16° × 22.5° segments per eye), using standardised and scaled images, and examined observations of 1 marked individual through time. We describe universal and extensive dark heterochromia (non-uniform colouration of the eye) in adult...

ContextCapture, measurement, genetic sampling, ringing and flagging of shorebirds on their nests are standard techniques that underpin the study and conservation of these species. However, these techniques may reduce hatching success by compromising parental care or nest crypsis, thereby negatively influencing results, study populations and bird we...

Few studies of animal escape behaviour simultaneously investigate behavioural and physiological responses. Differences between these response types, however, have consequences for the way in which habituation or tolerance is interpreted - behavioural habituation may incur physiological costs. We simultaneously measured heart rate (HR) and behaviour...

ContextMonitoring survival of free-living precocial avian young is critical for population management, but difficult to achieve. Perhaps the most promising technique available to track survival is the deployment of devices such as radio-transmitters or data loggers, which allow for tracking of the individuals. AimsTo understand if the deployment of...

Sex-biases in populations can have important implications for species’ social biology, population demography and mating systems. It has recently been suggested that in some shorebirds, sex-specific bias in survival of precocial young may occur. This may be driven by variation in the brood sex-ratio and/or the sexual size dimorphism of young birds,...

Within some socially monogamous species, the relative contribution of care provided by each parent varies substantially, from uniparental to equitable biparental care. The provision of care is influenced by its costs and benefits, which may differ between parents (leading to inter-parental “conflict”) and are expected to change in relation to the n...

Egg predators use an array of olfactory and visual cues to locate eggs. Precocial avian embryos within eggs can produce vocalizations for a period prior to hatching, which may be audible to predators. Here, we investigated, under field conditions, the embryonic vocalizations emitted from eggs of a shorebird species, the Red-capped Plover Charadrius...

Wildlife living in the suburbs faces the challenge of dealing with human presence and yard management (including the occurrence of pets) which vary at the scale of the house block. This study examined the influence of ecological factors (e.g. extent of grass and food availability) and anthropogenic factors (e.g. human activity and garden usage) on...

Vertebrate ecologists often assess invertebrate prey resources using techniques which sample invertebrate assemblages, and assume such sampling reflects the diet of their focal species. We compare the invertebrate assemblages as recorded by pitfall traps for Masked Lapwing Vanellus miles breeding territories in Phillip Island, Australia, and show t...

The authors describe a case of reversed position of the sexes by copulating Red-capped Plovers Charadrius ruficapillus at an intensively studied population at Cheetham Wetlands, Point Cooke Coastal Park, Victoria, Australia (37°53’56”S, 144°47’33”E). http://www.waderstudygroup.org/article/7365/

Simple Summary We studied the defensive behaviour of 94 pairs of nesting Masked Lapwings, Vanellus miles, in response to two types of human stimuli: a pedestrian and a person pushing a lawn mower. We also examined the effectiveness of a commonly promoted deterrent to swooping (the presence of mock eyes placed on the back of a person’s head) for eac...

The Masked Lapwing Vanellus miles is a common ground-nesting shorebird inhabiting grasslands, paddocks, rivers, lakes, swamps and, tidal mud flats. It is particularly common in the urban areas of Phillip Island, Victoria (Dann 1981, Marchant and Higgins 1993). The Masked Lapwing usually lays between one and four eggs (the mean number of eggs per cl...