Foraging Strategy in the Spoonbill ('Platalea leucorodia')

摘要

The purpose of the study was to find factors that made the spoonbill colony in the Zwanenwater decrease so drastically. Three to four hundred pairs of the spoonbill Platalea leucorodia bred in the Zwanenwater around 1930 against 60 pairs in the last years. Food-in-take rate is determined in five different areas of the spoonbill in the north of the province of Noordholland. The stickleback is the most important prey for the spoonbill of the Zwanenwater. The exclusion of migrating 3-spined sticklebacks from the polders might have caused the decline in number of spoonbills in the last fifty years.