Mobility of precocial chicks facilitates self‐feeding and escape from predators, but also allows chicks to move into potentially dangerous areas. At Cape Hatteras National Seashore and Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, North Carolina, precocial Piping Plovers (Charadrius melodus) are managed with vehicle and pedestrian exclusion buffers to reduce potential anthropogenic disturbance and mortality. From 2015 to 2018, we monitored 23 broods from hatching until fledging age (25 days), and recorded brood locations, chick behavior, and potentially disruptive predators, people, or vehicles. We estimated straight‐line hourly movement rates relative to brood habitat selection, behavior, and potential disturbance stimuli, daily movement distances, and 95% minimum convex polygon home range areas of broods through the pre‐fledging period. Daily brood movements , range = 0–327.3 m/d) varied by age and year. Hourly movements also varied , range = 0.04–1450.9 m/h), but were not well described by the factors we tested. Daily and hourly movements were generally shorter than current management buffer sizes, broods were always observed within protective buffers, and were rarely disturbed by human activity or possible predators. Home range sizes of broods ( increased as broods aged. Our results show that movements by plover broods can be variable and relatively unpredictable across temporal and spatial scales, but the low rate of brood disturbance suggests effective management of anthropogenic disturbance. We recommend that under current conditions, regular monitoring by managers should continue to ensure that the size and location of implemented buffers track actual brood use without exposing broods to risks from human beach users.

中文翻译：

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当前管理实践与大西洋沿岸人口中的珩科鸟繁殖活动的关系

早熟雏鸡的活动有助于自给自足并从掠食者逃脱，但也允许雏鸡移入潜在危险区域。在北卡罗来纳州的哈特拉斯角国家海滨和豌豆岛国家野生动物保护区，性早熟管道爱好者（Charadrius melodus）通过车辆和行人排除缓冲区进行管理，以减少潜在的人为干扰和死亡率。从2015年到2018年，我们监测了从孵化到成年（25天）的23个育雏，并记录了育雏位置，雏鸡行为以及潜在的破坏性捕食者，人类或车辆。我们估计了在出雏前期，相对于育雏栖息地选择，行为和潜在干扰刺激，每日运动距离以及育雏的最小凸多边形本垒区域95％的直线小时运动速率。每天的育雏运动范围为0-327.3 m / d，随年龄和年份而变化。每小时的动作也各不相同，范围= 0.04–1450.9 m / h），但我们测试的因素并未很好地描述。每日和每小时的移动通常比当前管理缓冲区的大小短，总是在保护缓冲区中观察到育雏，很少受到人类活动或捕食者的干扰。育雏家的范围大小（随着育雏年龄的增加而增加。我们的研究结果表明，pl育雏鸡的运动在时间和空间尺度上是可变的并且相对不可预测，但是育雏率低表明人为干扰的有效管理。我们建议在当前情况下在这种情况下，管理人员应定期进行监测，以确保所使用的缓冲器的大小和位置能够跟踪实际的育雏用途，而不会使育雏者遭受海滩使用者的威胁。