Zheng, Jia
Komdeur, Jan
Székely, Tamás
Versteegh, Maaike A.
Li, Donglai
Wang, Hui
Zhang, Zhengwang http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1063-7198
Article History
Received: 26 January 2021
Revised: 17 February 2021
Accepted: 23 February 2021
First Online: 25 March 2021
Declarations
:
: Our study was based on observations conducted in a nature reserve located in the Liaohe Delta, China. Permission for fieldwork was obtained from the national reserve administration and all aspects of the study complied with local ethical guidelines and regulations. Our study did not involve any housing of animals, manipulations or experiments. We monitored the behavior of the birds with binoculars from ~15 m away using video cameras (SONY HDR-XR160E) placed below nesting trees. The cameras were camouflaged with green cloth to match the environment in order to limit disturbance to the breeders. We caught adult individuals of Chinese penduline tits using mist-nest. Mist net sessions ended when the focal individual was caught, or after 40 min in case of failure. Trapping was neither harmful to the birds (none of the banded adults suffered any injury) nor was it likely to affect their survival (the weight of rings are less than 5% the body mass). We caught birds solely for (individually) marking them with color rings. Males were caught during nest building and females were caught after chicks hatched. Less than 10 min after banding, we released the birds within 20 m from their nest.All applicable international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the use of animals were followed. The research complies with the current laws of China. Our study was approved by the Institutional animal care and use committee of Beijing Normal University and MOE KEY laboratory for biodiversity science and ecology engineer, Beijing Normal University. Fieldwork was carried out with permission from Liaohekou National Nature Reserve, Liaoning, China. The bird banding was approved by the Forestry Department of Liaoning Province, China. This research (observational study) was under an agreement with the Animal Management Committee at the College of Life Sciences, Beijing Normal University (permit no. CLS-EAW-2020-002).
: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.