ANNOUNCEMENTS
Multi-species heronries have been the focus of research as to how these colonial nesting waterbirds co-occur and partition nesting space. This dissertation study was taken up in line with this to investigate the association among colonial nesting waterbirds at the Kokkare-Bellur Community Reserve in Southern India, where large number of Painted Stork (Mycteria leucocephla) along with three associate species: Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax), Little Cormorant (Microcarbo niger) and Little Egret (Egretta garzetta) are known to nest. During the study, carried out from January to April,2020 a total of 1259 nests were recorded, of which 849 were of Painted Stork followed by Black-crowned Night Heron (308), Little Cormorant (56) and Little Egret (46). The nests were distributed in four woodland patches in the area, and 94% of these were recorded on three tree species: Thespesia populnea (654), Tamarindus indica (262) and Delonix alata (271). Among the three associates, Night Heron invariably nested with Painted Stork indicating an association, while Little Cormorant and Little Egret were observed nesting primarily on Delonix alata that had relatively low number of Stork nests. Nests of Night Heron were placed significantly lower in the canopy on T. populnea and T. indica in relation to Painted Stork nests (Mann-Whitney U=2. 7 and U=0.27, P <0.05 respectively) indicating nesting space partioning between the two. However, on D. alata the tree structure likely influenced nest placement of the two species and nest height was not significantly different (Mann-Whitney U=2. 7, P=0.845). The study documented the factors which are likely to influence the interspecies nesting associations. Factors such as nesting space availability and competition for space were found to affect the pattern of nesting and association of the smaller colonial nesters with the Painted Stork.
