The study was carried out on 94 abandoned arable fields (0.1–83.5 ha) comprising a total area of 400 ha in the intensively farmed region of the Wrocław plain (54.8 km2, SW Poland). A total of 101 Whinchat territories were found in the study area, all of them in abandoned crop fields with a well-developed layer of dried perennials from the previous year (Tanacetum vulgare, Artemisia vulgaris, Solidago sp.). Whinchats occupied 56 (60%) of the 94 fields surveyed. The probability of a Whinchat occupying a particular field was closely related to its size: the probability of occupation was 50% in fields of about 1.8 ha, and rose to 100% in fields larger than 13 ha. Single males occupied thirty-eight territories (37.6%). The number of Whinchat territories per occupied abandoned field lay between 1 and 14. Thirty-three fields held only a single Whinchat territory. The density of Whinchat territories was negatively correlated with the size of an abandoned field. Single males inhabited the smallest fields.
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