Waterbirds counts in the Drugeon bassin, France (game reserves and hunting areas) in 2020

This dataset describes waterbird observations performed in game reserves and in hunting areas of the Drugeon river basin,  France, in 2020.

For each game reserve, a similar hunting area was selected in the same or an adjacent commune. If the hunting reserve was a stretch of river, as in Bonnevaux or Houtaud, another stretch of river was surveyed for comparison. In Frasne, the hunting reserve covers the Lothaud pond. Therefore, the adjacent Lucien pond was surveyed as a huntable area. The other nine wetland reserves are located in marshes and therefore nine other marshes were surveyed. Once this work was done, 10 other wetlands were also surveyed to complete the study. In total, 12 hunting reserves and 22 huntable areas, all in wetlands, were surveyed twice during the autumn of 2020. One of the 13 reserves was not surveyed (just forgotten in the sampling plan). The first survey was carried out between 24 August and 5 September, i.e. just before the opening of the waterfowl hunting season on 6 September. The second pass was carried out between 19 and 29 October, i.e. 44 to 54 days after the opening of the hunting season.

Each sector was surveyed on foot, with round trips spaced at approximately 20 m intervals. The use of the Caynax application on Android allowed to control the location of the route, the regular spacing of the passages and the length of the route taken on each wetland. For both ponds, the water bodies were circled and birds were counted along the banks and on the water table. All characteristic wetland birds were noted, specifying whether they had been seen landing or in transit flight. Only birds landing are taken into account in this study. The observations were then recorded in an Excel table with the name of the area, its hunting status, the surface area, the number of kilometres covered during the survey and the date of the survey (see table db0.txt and article cited below for more details).

FILE DESCRIPTION:

CartePAIGN_BB.jpg  map of the areas studied. Green, game reserves sampled; red , hunting areas sampled: blue, one game reserve not sampled.

db0.txt counts for each area sampled

• com, commune
• lieu, place name
• pair, pair ID
• res, game reserve (OUI = yes, NON = no)
• ha, area sampled
• km, number of kilometers walked
• mois, month
• The next 28 colums are species ID, for full names  see table Statuts.txt.

Game reserves and hunting areas sampled.kml  kml file of the areas sampled (game reserves in green, hunting areas sampled in red; in blue, one reserve not sampled)

Statuts.txt list of species recorded

• espece, specie name (in French)
• nom latin, latin name
• nom anglais, species name (in English)
• sp, species ID
• protection, protection status: Protégée, protected; Chassable, huntable
• migrateur, migratory status: Migrateur tardif, late migratory; Migrateur précoce, early migratory

SUPPLEMENTARY FILES

R_code_for_analysis.zip Workflow (in French) and R code for the analyses carried out in the article Michelat & Giraudoux (2023).