Land cover associations of nesting territories of three sympatric Buteos in shortgrass prairie

摘要: Abstract Three species of Buteo hawks nest sympatrically in the southern Great Plains United States. Dietary overlap among them is broad and we tested hypothesis these partition their breeding habitat spatially. We compared land cover topography around 224 nests three shortgrass prairie 2004 2005. Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis) nested almost exclusively riparian timber surrounded by (95% nests) disproportionately used areas with greater topographic relief within landscapes. Swainson's (B. swainsoni) commonly low-relief dominated small-grain production agriculture but generally habitats proportion to availability. Most sites Ferruginous regalis) were (78% nests), some that at least partially agricultural. had two times more sand sagebrush (Artemisia filifolia) ...