Site fidelity of Two-banded plovers (Charadrius falklandicus) within their breeding grounds in Northern Patagonia, Argentina

HEVIA, G.; BERTELLOTTI, M.; D'AMICO, V.

Panamá

Congreso; VIII Western Hemisphere Shorebird Group Meeting; 2019

Audubon Panamá

A regional population of Two-banded Plovers (Charadrius falklandicus) breed in coastal areas located northeast of the Chubut province, Patagonia Argentina. They generally use two beaches separated by approximately 65 km in a straight line: Playas Blancas (98ha, Península Valdés) and Playa Paraná (55ha, Puerto Madryn). We captured and banded 27, 20 and 7 incubating adults in 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively. All birds were individually marked with a metal ring and an orange flag engraved with an alphanumeric code. We recorded flag codes by photographing and classified the resightings within the following seasons after banding as: ?breeders? (individuals resighted nesting), and ?non-breeders? (individuals resighted no nesting). From all birds banded in 2016, nearly 80% (n=19) and 33% (n=8) were resighted at the same beach in 2017 and 2018, respectively. For instance, we found 32% of the birds were breeders, while 68% were detected resting, foraging, alone or mixed with other shorebirds. From birds banded in 2017, we could only resight 40% (n=8) in 2018; nevertheless, this number is likely related to low survey efforts, since we only visited Paraná beach. We found six individuals that nested twice during a season in the same site, and nine plovers bred in two consecutive seasons at the same site. Besides, we identified three individuals that paired with different banded partners among seasons.