Biota from the coastal wetlands of Praia da Vitória (Terceira, Azores, Portugal): Part 3 – Birds

Abstract Background The data presented here come from field observations of Aves between August 2013 and October 2018 as part of a LIFE research project aiming to preserve and restore three coastal wetlands from Praia da Vitória (Terceira Island, Azores, Portugal). Systematic monthly observations were carried out for five years in order to provide a checklist and monitoring of bird species and subspecies observed in three sites: Paul da Praia da Vitória (PPV), Paul do Belo Jardim (PBJ) and Paul da Pedreira do Cabo da Praia (PPCP). Main objectives were to determine their ornithological richness while also adding data to the overall knowledge of Azorean Avifauna and to monitor seasonal and between-year variation on species abundance. New information During a five-year observation period (2013-2018), a total of 82,985 birds belonging to 108 species/subspecies were observed. From this, 16,663 were in PPV, 11,793 from PBJ and 54,529 from PPCP. The total richness was 55, 40 and 85, respectively. Three species are first records for the Azores: Aythya americana (Eyton, 1838); Chlidonias leucopterus (Temminck, 1815) and Tringa brevipes (Vieillot, 1816). One species is a new record for Terceira Island: Lophodytes cucullatus (Linnaeus, 1758).


Introduction
The Azorean Avifauna has been described in several publications, the most recent being Rodrigues et al. (2010), Rodebrand (2012) and Barcelos et al. (2015). Despite the fact that the Azorean list of breeding birds is short (37 species breeding and seven occasionally nesting; Rodrigues et al. 2010), as a consequence of dramatic extinction events (Rando et al. 2013, Alcover et al. 2015, Rando et al. 2017, those publications added numerous records of non-breeding landbird and waterbird species, particularly occasional migrant and wintering species. Those novelties are a consequence of an increase in birdwatching activity on several Azorean islands and an increased interest in rare Nearctic birds arriving to Azores (Alfrey et al. 2018), due to storms that divert birds from their normal migratory routes.
Three coastal wetlands from the municipality of Praia da Vitória (Terceira Island, Azores, Portugal) -Paul da Praia da Vitória (PPV), Paul do Belo Jardim (PBJ) and Paul da Pedreira do Cabo da Praia (PPCP) -were studied during the LIFE -Coastal Wetlands Restoration Project and are known as a high avifauna site attracting birdwatchers and which include an important number of species (Dias et al. 1991, Morton et al. 1997, Morton et al. 1998, Melo and Dias 2005, Pereira and Melo 2017. Pereira and Melo (2017) published a field guidebook on the bird species occurring in PPCP, highlighting the particular importance of this wetland for migrant species and regular and occasional wintering birds.
This manuscript is the third contribution in a series of papers that characterise the biota of the three coastal wetlands from this area (Borges et al. 2018, Gabriel et al. 2019).

General description
Purpose: The aim of this work is to inventory the avifauna present in the three coastal areas of Praia da Vitória (Terceira Island, Azores), focused on the LIFE-CWR Project, Paul da Praia da Vitória (PPV) (Fig. 1), Paul do Belo Jardim (PBJ) (Fig. 2) and Paul da Pedreira do Cabo da Praia (PPCP) (Fig. 3), in order to improve our knowledge on the bird diversity that occurs in this area, detect eventual new species for the Azores and monitor seasonal and between-year variation on species abundance.  General aspect of Paul Belo Jardim (Photo by Paulo A.V. Borges).

Project description
Title: Inventory of bird species in three coastal wetlands from Terceira Island (Azores) Personnel: The inventory was conducted during five years between August 2013 and October 2018 by experienced birdwatchers: Sofia Goulart, Mariana R. Brito and Sónia Santos.
Study area description: Terceira Island (area: 400.6 km²; elevation: 1,021.14 m) is one of the nine islands of the Azores archipelago, located in the North Atlantic, roughly at 38°4 3'49''N 27°19'10' 'W (Forjaz et al. 2004). The climate in the Azores is temperate oceanic, with regular and abundant rainfall, high levels of relative humidity and persistent western winds, mainly during the winter and autumn seasons (Azevedo et al. 1999).

Sampling methods
Study extent: This study covers a small coastal area with 3.58 km extension between PPV and PPCP.
Sampling description: At the three wetland sites, more than 788 days of observations were carried out for a total of ca. 11,820 h of direct observations. Each observation lasted 15 minutes in which every sighted bird was registered. These were made by experienced birdwatchers (two to three researchers in the field each day) using a Swarovski 20-60 telescope and Opticron Verano HD 10-42 binocular. Photographs were made with a Canon 60D camera (a database and Photo repository is available at http://lifecwr.com/index.php/ pt/observacao/registos-de-observacao/registos-de-observacao-2). Whenever needed, several field-guides were used (e.g. Pereira 2010, Mullarney et al. 2012, as well as websites on Azorean birds, namely AVES DOS AÇORES, Azores bird sightings and Birdin g Azores.

Geographic coverage
Description: Praia da Vitória marshes, Terceira Island (Azores), Macaronesia, Portugal. Description: In this data table, we include all the records for which a taxonomic identification of the species was possible. The dataset submitted to GBIF is structured as a sample event dataset, with two tables: event (as core) and occurrences. The data in this sampling event resource have been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwCA), which is a standardised format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 2003 records. One extension data table also exists. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated in the IPT link. This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for downloading in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time. In Suppl. material 1, we provide a simpler dataset with few columns in a single table. Of all observed species, three are not referred to in Barcelos et al. (2015), which is the most recent update on the list of Azorean birds: Aythya americana (Eyton 1838), Chlidonias leucopterus (Temminck 1815) and Tringa brevipes (Vieillot 1816). One species is a new record for Terceira Island: Lophodytes cucullatus (Linnaeus 1758). Aythya americana is a Nearctic occasional migrant duck, Chlidonias leucopterus is a Palearctic tern and Tringa brevipes is a shorebird breeding in northeast Siberia. All other species have previously been recorded at several levels of relative abundance, both as breeding native (ten taxa), breeding Azorean endemic (seven taxa), breeding Macaronesian endemic (one taxon), breeding introduced (four taxa) and vagrant (87 additional taxa) ( Table 1). About 15 out of the 21 breeding species are common with more than 100 individuals recorded in the three sites. Based on the Barcelos et al. (2015) classification of vagrant species, in the three sites we found: 45 occasional migrants, 21 regular migrants, 17 occasional wintering taxa and 26 regular wintering taxa. The Palearctic taxa dominate the community of birds (52 taxa), whereas Holarctic (28 taxa) and Nearctic (25 taxa) have similar but with half of the frequency.