Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

TIME ACTIVITY BUDGETS AND SPATIAL ASSOCIATION OF NON BREEDING MALLARD WITH OTHER WATER BIRDS WINTERING AT BENI HAROUN DAM NORTH EAST ALGERIA

Bouzegag Abdelaziz, Semara Lounis, Khammar Hichem Saheb Menouar and Houhamdi Moussa

Abstract

Artificial wetlands are becoming necessary environments for wintering waterbirds, because of the degradation of natural wetlands due to various anthropogenic pressures and to climate change. Monitoring of wintering Mallard Anas platyrhynchos in the Beni Haroun dam has shown a high abundance during the first season (2016-2017) with a maximum of 1158 individuals. Assessment of diurnal time budget of Mallard exhibited the dominance of three main activities: sleeping (53.59%), swimming (15.09%) and grooming (12.43%). Regarding the interspecific association, a mosaic of neighbor species was observed with different distances to shoreline and different behaviors for individuals Mallards. We noted that there is a very highly significant difference (P  0.001) in terms of the average distance between these species and the shoreline. Thus, the analysis of behavior-association dependence showed significant links (P  0.05).