marcelfinlay's Identifications

Habitat & Geographic Range
Since Daurian Redstarts are considered migratory birds, their habitats and geographic ranges change depending on the seasons. According to IUCN (2016), its geographic range covers most of southern Russia, northeastern Mongolia, and parts of Asia (China in particular; for example, Beijing or Lanzhou). These birds spend a lot of time in these locations because the temperature is suitable for the time of breeding seasons (IUCN 2016). As winter is approaching however, they tend to migrate more south to the southern part of Japan, such as Osaka, or Southern China, like Hong Kong, to stay away from the extreme cold weather, as the attached images have shown in the appendix (Peterson 2017).

In terms of habitats (living spaces), they can be found in a variety of places across the above geographic ranges. For example, rural gardens, forests, shrub lands, or tropical/subtropical high altitudes (Birdlife International 2017; Peterson 2017). A commonality is shared between all these locations of habitats, in that all of them contain tree plantations, where food sources are available at any given time (Tsujita et al. 2007). Furthermore, within these temporary ‘homes,’ Daurian Redstarts may begin to build their own territories for their mates and offspring during the mating season, particularly in the home gardens that can provide such warm and welcome environments for them (Peterson 2017).

Size/Weight & Lifespan
Typically, the average size of a Daurian Redstart is around 15cm in length, and ranging from 11g to 20g in weight (Hone and O’Gorman 2013). According to An-Age (2017), its maximum longevity is about 10.2 years.

Diet
The most common (and primary) diet for Daurian Redstarts is invertebrates, which include worms and insects that can be found in typical farms (Tsujita et al. 2007). During the breeding season, they like to feed on caterpillars and spiders because they require energy for reproduction (Lourenco 2013). As researched by Tsujita et al. (2007), Daurian Redstarts also look for fruits as another source of nutrients. Intriguingly, they have discovered that Daurian Redstarts, as a migrant species, consider heavily on the profitability of the fruit. The reason being that they need adequate energy for migration as some fruits may not provide enough vitality for such an exhausting annual routine (Tsujita et al. 2007).

Reproduction & Communication
Daurian Redstarts are considered sexually dimorphic, meaning that male and female redstarts are born to be different in terms of their appearances (Peterson 2017). According to Peterson (2017), the colouration of the males are more obvious than the females: males have, “orange chest and lower back, black upper back, head, and neck, grey crown and nape, and very dark brown wings with large white patches,” whereas, females’ coloration is more ‘dull,’ they are mostly brown, and the colour is progressively lighter towards the lower portion of their bodies. Due to the bright coloration of the males, they tend to spend most of their time in the open (outside of their home), and correspondingly, the chance of them seeking for a mate increases, which is why the bright coloration is considered as one of the sexual selected traits (Peterson 2017).
Another factor that can affect the chance of reproduction is through their communications. However, the communication between the population of Daurian Redstart not only accounts for reproduction, but also accounts for survivorship; thus, the overall fitness of Daurian Redstart. According to Huang et al. (2012), there are two types of sounds that they make for communication, ‘call’ and ‘song’. A ‘call’ is a simple and monotonous sound that is used for foraging, and evacuation of predators. This type of sound can be made by all Daurian Redstarts, and perhaps, all species of birds. A ‘song’ is more complex and variant in tones type of sound that is primarily used by male Daurian Redstarts during mating seasons. The purpose of the ‘song’ is to guide the territory and attract females, which demonstrate the example of intra-sexual selection and inter-sexual selection, respectively (Huang et al. 2012).

Predation: Does the animal have any predators?
In an evolutionary biological perspective, a smaller-sized animal species is usually preyed upon by larger-sized animal species, with no exceptions to the case of Daurian Redstarts (Baker 2015). According to a study by Geng et al.’s (2009), Falco tinnunculus (Common Kestrel) serves as a predator to Daurian Redstart during the Kestrel’s breeding seasons. Due to the location of the conducted study, it is suggested that this particular consumption often takes place in Northern China, where almost all Durian Redstarts are found during the Kestrel’s breeding seasons in the spring (Geng et al. 2009). Along with this predator, another species within the Falconidae’s family, Eurasian Bobby, also serves as a predator to the Daurian Redstart (Blake 2013). It has been observed at the Gwangshindaegyo Bridge in South Korea that the predation is quite similar to that of the Common Kestrel. Moreover, active sites of Eurasian Bobby are located across South Russia, China, Korea and Japan (Blake 2013). Despite the conservation status of the Daurian Redstart, these two species of Falcondiaes’ are quite threatening to the population of the Daurain Redstart, as they spread across most of Redstarts’ geographic ranges as well as their habitats.

Conservation Status
Since the population trend of Daurian Redstarts is stable, the conservation status is considered to be the least concerning, compared to its entire avian population (IUCN 2016). The reason being that it is widespread across Asia, and it is an abundant taxon in the wild (Outram 361).

Did You Know?
Whilst Daurian Redstarts (hosts) are known to lay blue or white eggs, Common Cuckoos are able to ‘sneak’ their eggs to their hosts’ nests by “cuckoo parasitism” in order to increase Cuckoo’s reproductive success (Yang et al. 2016). This progress is quite interruptive to the Redstarts’ phenotype as it can disturb their fitness. Interestingly, Redstarts in turn, begin to develop the ability to discriminate these “dissimilar egg phenotypes” to prevent incubating conspecific’s eggs; demonstrating a phenomenon called co-evolution (Yang et al. 2016). As a result, Daurian Redstarts have ‘evolved’ from a non-discriminator (with “high recognition error” of foreign eggs) to an ‘intermediate rejecter’ who can now consistently reject most conspecific egg morphs (Yang et al. 2016).

Reference
AnAge [Internet]. 2010. University of Alabama at Birmingham: The Human Ageing Genomic
Resources; [Updated 2010; cited 2017 October 4]. Available from: http://genomics.senescence.info/species/entry.php?species=Phoenicurus_phoenicurus

Baker J, Meade A, Pagel M, Venditt, C. 2015. Adaptive evolution toward larger size in mammals.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 112(16): 5093-5098. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1419823112

Birdlife International [Internet]. 2017. United Kingdom: Aage V. Jensen Charity Foundation;
[updated 2017; cited 2017 October 5]. Available from:
http://datazone.birdlife.org/species/factsheet/daurian-redstart-phoenicurus-auroreus/details

Birds of the World [Internet]. 2013. Portuguese: Lourenco Pedro; [updated 2013 May 14; cited
2017 October 25]. Available from: http://planetbirds.blogspot.ca/2013/05/daurian-redstart.html

Geng R, Zhang X, Ou W, Sun H, Lei F, Gao W, Wang H. 2009. Diet and prey consumption of
breeding Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) in Northeast China. Prog. in Nat. Sci. 19(2009): 1501-1507. doi: 10.1016/j.pnsc.2009.03.011

Hone D, and O’Gorman E. 2013. Body size datasets for PLOS ONE paper. Figshare. 21(28). doi:
10.1371/journal.pone.0051925

Huang Y-L, Yang Q, Jiang C, Xia C-W. 2012. Two distinct parts within the song of Phoenicurus
auroreus, and individual identification on the basis of the song. Zool Res. 33(3): 249-254.
doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1141.2012.03249

Outram B. 1932. Birds of western China obtained by the Kelly-Roosevelts expedition [Internet]. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: Chicago; [updated 1932; cited 2017 October 17]. Available from: https://archive.org/details/birdsofwesternch1811bang

Shiga Rivers- Greg Peterson in Japan [Internet]. Japan; Greg Peterson; [updated 2017 February 17; cited 2017 October 4]. Available from: https://shigarivers.com/category/%E9%87%8E%E9%B3%A5/

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species [Internet]. 2017. United Kingdom: IUCN; [updated 2017 February; cited 2017 October 17]. Available from: http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/22710066/0

Tsujita, Kaori, Sakai, Shinjiro, and Kikuzawa, Kihachiro. (2007). Does individual variation in fruit profitability override color differences in avian choice of red or white Ilex serrata fruits?. Ecol. Res. 2008(23): 445-450. doi: 10.1007/s11284-007-0396-6

Wordpsress [Internet]. 2013. Blake Patrick; [updated 2013 December 19; cited 2017 October 17]. Available from: https://pelagicus.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/snippets-of-winter/#comments

Yang C, Li Z, Zhang Y, Wang H, Liang W, Moller A-P. 2016. Egg polymorphism and egg discrimination in the Daurian Redstart Phoenicurus auroreus, a host of the Common Cuckoo Cuculus canorus. Ornithol Sci. 15(2): 127-132. doi.org/10.2326/osj.15.127