Movements and home ranges of Mountain Plovers raising broods in three Colorado landscapes (original) (raw)

We report movements and home-range sizes of adult Mountain Plovers (Charadrius montanus) with broods on rangeland, agricultural fields, and prairie dog habitats in eastern Colorado. Estimates of home range size (95% fixed kernel) were similar across the three habitats: rangeland (146.1 ha Ϯ 101.5), agricultural fields (131.6 ha Ϯ 74.4), and prairie dog towns (243.3 ha Ϯ 366.3). Our minimum convex polygon estimates of home-range size were comparable to those on rangeland reported by . In addition, movements-defined as the distance between consecutive locations of adults with broods-were equivalent across habitats. However, our findings on prairie dog habitat suggest that home-range size for brood rearing may be related to whether the prairie dog habitat is in a complex of towns or in an isolated town.