Nesting birds often respond to human disturbance as to a predatory act. In the case of the high Arctic, the disturbance of incubating birds may bring further complications due to egg cooling. In addition, it is assumed that birds in the high Arctic are not shy and do not respond to human presence fearfully. We tested how quickly the Arctic terns (Sterna paradisaea) nesting in two colonies in Svalbard return to the nest after human disturbance. One colony was situated inside a town where the terns were regularly harassed by human presence. The second colony was on a glacial foreland where breeding terns have limited experience with humans. We found that terns without frequent experience with humans returned to the nest about 5 min after disturbance, while urban terns habituated to human presence returned within a few tens of seconds. The urban terns in this way likely solve the risk of spending too much time off the nest, which could lead under the conditions of the high Arctic to the stopping of embryogenesis. Terns from a remote colony do not show lower hatching success of their eggs than the urban ones, however, incubation and the whole population of terns could be threatened when there is more frequent disturbance by researchers or tourists.

中文翻译：

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筑巢北极燕鸥 (Sterna paradisaea) 对人类干扰的反应

筑巢的鸟类经常对人类的掠夺行为做出反应。在高北极的情况下，孵化鸟类的干扰可能会因鸡蛋冷却而带来进一步的并发症。此外，假设北极地区的鸟类并不害羞，也不会对人类的存在做出可怕的反应。我们测试了在斯瓦尔巴群岛两个殖民地筑巢的北极燕鸥 (Sterna paradisaea) 在人类干扰后返回巢穴的速度。一个殖民地位于一个城镇内，那里的燕鸥经常受到人类的骚扰。第二个殖民地位于冰川前陆，在那里繁殖燕鸥与人类的经验有限。我们发现，没有频繁与人类接触的燕鸥在受到干扰后约 5 分钟返回巢穴，而习惯于人类存在的城市燕鸥在几十秒内返回。城市燕鸥以这种方式可能会解决在巢外花费太多时间的风险，这可能会在北极高海拔的条件下导致胚胎发生停止。来自偏远殖民地的燕鸥孵化成功率并不低于城市燕鸥，然而，当研究人员或游客更频繁地干扰时，孵化和整个燕鸥种群可能会受到威胁。