Dear Federico,

Bird Life international (http://www.birdlife.org) has done a wonderful job digitizing the home ranges (separating breeding from non-breeding areas) for pretty much all 10K+ extant bird species. Check out their 'Data Zone' to find what you need (NB: you might need to contact them directly to get shapefiles of the species you want but rest assured they are incredibly nice and quick to respond!) Hope this helps...

Carlos

I belive you mean the species range and not home range. Home range would refer to the area used by an individual bird, which is something very different. If you do mean the species range than the Birdlife international website is probably the one with the most accurate information for the most species.

Also, note that Picidae are not passerines!

My bad... I meant species' range (thanks for pointing this out Pedro)

I think there's an error in the previous reply by Carlos Botero. Bird Life International provides digitized records of species distributions, but not home ranges. Home range, at least as I use the term, pertains to the daily, seasonal, or annual wanderings of individuals of a species. Species distributions describe the seasonal or annual range of a species; i.e., it is the collections of home ranges for all individuals of a species, but may or may not incorporate information regarding information on an organism's migration path.

The BTO website gives species ranges, summer and winter, plus habitat type - if this is good information, then the BirdLife website is what is needed.

These websites might help:

http://www.xeno-canto.org/

http://www.wikiaves.com/

http://www.worldbirds.org/mapportal/worldmap.php

To SouthAmerican Birds you can download the shapes of species´s distributions (or species ranges) in http://www.natureserve.org/infonatura/ or http://www.natureserve.org/getData/birdMaps.jsp . There are north american species too.

As pointed out before, Federico needs the home range and not the species distribution range, which is available in the BirdLife website as said above. Moreover, please note that Picidae (non-passerine), Sylvidae, etc. are families and not species names. For detailed, specific information regarding particular passerine species my best bet would be to carry out an extensive internet search for published articles and contact the authors directly. Again, you must first specify which species would you be working with, because I don't think there exists such thing as Family Home Ranges.

Thank you very much for the lot of information. However, i need information about "home-range" of each species rather "species range" or "areal distribution".

Home range is refered to the area used by an individual bird or better: breeding pair. Is so hard to find this...

Giving meaningful data for home ranges (for individual or paired birds) is impossible as it routinely varies enormously depending on habitat type/quality, population pressures etc. etc. etc. At best, an average could be quoted with a potentially huge standard deviation.

Thanks Otto et al. for the key-suggestions. I modified the question in order to clarify the exact query: we need information about the "home-range" (not "species distribution range") for several European bird species (belonging to the following families: Picidae and some Passeriformes: Sylvidae, Lanidae, Emberizidae). We collect a lot od papers, mainly about Emberizidae and Lanidae (E. cirlus, E. hortulana, M. clanadra, L.collurio, L. senator, L. minus) but we need also data about the other species, mainly belonging Sylvidae and Picidae families...

Any else or suggestion are welcomed!

Thanks

Not a species you will be interested in, but just for instance -

http://www.academia.edu/1784208/Factors_Influencing_Home-Range_Size_of_Swainsons_Warblers_in_Eastern_Arkansas

This species shows a ten-fold variation in home range (territory) depending on habitat type/quality.

Studies that show small variation in home ranges are generally surveys of individuals or pairs that are inhabiting similar and/or very uniform habitat.

Cramp and Simmons is your best bet for European species. If you're casting a wider geographical net and need home ranges for North American or other species, there are the BNA accounts and the HANZAB for Australia and New Zealand. Apart from that, my advise is to dig through the literature yourself, although as some have pointed out already, home range size is going to vary by habitat, sex, season, etc. The advantage of collecting all of the data yourself from the literature is that at least you have details of this variation and that can be incorporated into many multivariate models for comparative studies.

It may be wiser to approach your problem from a completely different point - if your study covers only a small area, you need data from very similar habitat; if your study covers a very large area, you need data that covers a large selection of the habitats involved, and a way of allocating that data at least approximately pro-rata.

Hi,

I think that they home range data for many species is really difficult to obtain.

And then, the home ranges depend to many local parameter such as landscape, food stock, intra-specific competition, and inter-specific interaction.

I don't know what you want to do analysis, However for an analysis at large scale with many species you can use the mean species mass (much easier to find) to approch their home range.

Jetz, Walter, Chris Carbone, Jenny Fulford, et James H. Brown. 2004. « The Scaling of Animal Space Use ». Science 306 (5694) (août 10): 266‑268.

Good luck

Hi Federico,

I don't know any good tool to suggest, but I've been studying European reed warblers Acrocephalus scirpaceus for a couple of years, so I can add some information about this species. Breeding territories in mid season are very small (diameter of 20 m) but home range (defined as the area explored by birds: places where they forage, seek for EPC etc.) is 2-3 hectares on my study plot. The plot represents habitat typical of the species: dense reedbed fringed by cattails. It adjoins a dike overgrown with trees and bushes, which is used for foraging. I suppose that in other, less optimal habitats, home-ranges may be bigger. For example, I know that individuals breeding on islands (on the same pond) fly to pond edges to forage, so their home range must be 10 ha or more.

Hi Lucyna....thank you very much for the information...If you send to me some your result (report, short note or article) I can cite your references...ok?

Thanks,

Federico

Hi Federico,

Unfortunately, I haven't any published data about home range of individuals in my population. The data I wrote before (2-3 ha) refer to maximum recorded distances of an individual within a breeding season. However, the overwhelming majority of movements occur within 1-1.5 ha from a nest.

Lucyna

Hi Federico,

Try to check the info on missing species in Handbuch der Vögel Mitteleuropas edited by Glutz von Blotzheim and Bauer, this is sort of an equivalent to Cramp but sometimes with more detailed information or from other grey-literature sources. I guess you can get all the volumes in searchable PDF files in one CD.

Best wishes,

Petr

Thank you very much for information!