Private gardens provide vital opportunities for people to interact with nature. The mostudpopular form of interaction is through garden bird feeding. Understanding how landscapeudfeatures and seasons determine patterns of movement of feeder-using songbirds is key toudmaximising the well-being benefits they provide. To determine these patterns we establishedudthree networks of automated data loggers along a gradient of greenspace fragmentation. Overuda 12-month period we tracked 452 tagged blue tits Cyantistes caeruleus and great tits Parusudmajor moving between feeder pairs 9,848 times, to address two questions: (i) Do urbanudfeatures within different forms, and season, influence structural (presence-absence ofudconnections between feeders by birds) and functional (frequency of these connections)udconnectivity? (ii) Are there general patterns of structural and functional connectivity acrossudforms? Vegetation cover increased connectivity in all three networks, whereas the presenceudof road gaps negatively affected functional but not structural connectivity. Across networksudstructural connectivity was lowest in the summer when birds maintain breeding territories,udhowever patterns of functional connectivity appeared to vary with habitat fragmentation.udUsing empirical data this study shows how key urban features and season influenceudmovement of feeder-using songbirds, and we provide evidence that this is related toudgreenspace fragmentation.
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