Abstract:

Selection of dust-bathing sites used by brown-eared pheasant was studied by using a transect method in Huanglong Mountains Nature Reserve, Shaanxi, China from November 2006 to January 2007. Along the 8 sampling transects, 54 sites used by brown-eared pheasant and 96 random plots were set. Brown-eared pheasant preferred the dust-bathing sites located on lower slope, sunny slope, half sunny slope, upper slope side and ridge, avoided the sites on mid-upper slope location, shady slope and gully, and selected randomly vegetation type. Comparing with random plots, dust-bathing sites were usually set at lower altitude close to human disturbance, water source and edge of woods. On the sites, there were a small number of trees with small cover, diameter, and height, a small number of shrubs with small height and large cover, and abundant grasses with large cover and greater height that were noticeable. In Huanglong Mountains brown-eared pheasant frequently used caves as their dust-bathing sites, accounting for 35.19% of total dust-bathing sites. Dust-bathing sites in caves were relatively farther from human disturbance, lower visibility, and on steeper slopes, and had a big number of trees with large cover and small diameter, many shrubs with large cover and tall grasses. Distance to human disturbance and edge of woods, slope location, altitude, visibility, cover of shrub and number of trees were critically factors to discriminate the used sites and random plots. The overall classification model developed from those 7 variables was successful to distinguish dust-bathing sites from random ones at probability of 93.60%.

Key words: brown-eared pheasant, dust-bathing sites, stepwise discriminant analysis, Huanglong Mountains