Associations between human non-motorized recreational activity on nest box occupation, exploratory behaviour, and breeding success in a passerine bird

Anthropomorphic activities have a large impact on ecosystems in many ways, one of which is how animals behave. Non-motorised nature recreation is a popular human activity of which the impacts on nature are largely unknown. These activities, which include hiking, biking, pet walking and horseback riding, tend to increase during the commencement of the breeding activity for most passerine forest birds in temperate zones. We here investigated whether variation in recreational activity associates with patterns of nest box occupation and reproductive success in a long-term study of personality-typed great tits (Parus major). We measured human disturbance in the area by recording the frequency of non-motorised recreational activities by observations. We were particularly interested in the relationship between disturbance levels and nest box occupancy as well as the relationship between disturbance levels of occupied nest boxes and exploratory scores of the great tits that occupied them. We al..., Data Collection
The disturbance data is an observational data. To measure the disturbance caused by recreational activities, we counted the number of people we encountered on the 12 path junctions in the study area. The activities that were considered recreational activities were hiking, walking, cycling, pet walking and horseback riding. On each junction, the measurements were taken the same number of times in two separate time periods that we pre-determined morning (9-12h) and afternoon (12-15h). A kernel interpolation was performed using ArcGis Pro version 3.1.0 to estimate the disturbance levels of each nest box in the study area. Kernel values were calculated by taking into account the number of visitors on the paths and the distance of nest box to all paths around it.
The nest occupancy data was extracted from the nest box breeding occupancy data that were collected during breeding seasons (April-June) from 2012 to 2021. In order to determine the individuals that occupie the nest ..., , # Data from: Associations between human non-motorized recreational activity on nest box occupation, exploratory behaviour, and breeding success in a passerine bird

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.79cnp5j5k](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.79cnp5j5k)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset contains the data and codes to replicate the results that were presented in the paper Urhan et al. (2025) paper in the Journal of Avian Biology. 

All data was collected in in Westerheide forest (Groot Warnsborn, 52.01633, 5.84114), near Arnhem, the Netherlands.

The disturbance data is an observational data. To measure the disturbance caused by recreational activities, we counted the number of people we encountered on the 12 path junctions in the study area. The activities that were considered recreational activities were hiking, walking, cycling, pet walking and horseback riding. On each junction, the measurements were taken the same number of times in two separate time periods tha...