Diving ducks, including the Goldeneye, spend the winter in numerous flocks on inland and coastal waters across Europe. However, data on their behaviour at wintering sites are sparse, and our understanding of various aspects of their time budget, such as courtship, aggression, competition, and flocking, is still limited. This is largely due to the difficulty of approaching duck flocks closely enough to observe them from a reasonable distance. The Goldeneye has suffered a decline in its numbers on the wintering grounds. Complementing our knowledge of ethology of this species will allow us to better plan future conservation efforts. The estuarial section of the Vistula near Gdańsk is an exceptional site, as goldeneyes and long-tailed ducks gather here in large numbers and can be observed from a short distance. The planned research project aims to describe the daily time budget of wintering males and females of the Goldeneye and the factors that may influence its variability. The obtained results will be compared with data on the Long-tailed Duck, a similarly sized diving duck, collected in previous seasons.
The student will observe goldeneyes in the estuary section of the Vistula river near Gdańsk and collect data on different aspects of their behaviour. This task will be conducted with help of our students. The student will then enter the results from the video recordings into a database for statistical analysis. The frame of the analyses and their results will be discussed with the supervisors of the internship. The results will be published in a scientific journal upon completion of the project.
Expertise in collecting data on wild animal behaviour, processing the obtained data, understanding behavioural ecology, and, to some extent, using statistical tools for data analysis.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
