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  • WHERE I WORK

A partridge in hand on the Spanish steppe

As part of his PhD research into the effects of farming and hunting on endangered bird populations in Spain, Xabier Cabodevilla tracked birds and collected faecal samples from roosting sites.
By
  1. Jack Leeming
Xabier Cabodevilla holding a partridge in the agro-environmental centre of El Chaparrillo, Spain.

Xabier Cabodevilla recently completed his PhD at the University of the Basque Country in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, and the Spanish Institute for Game and Wildlife Research in Ciudad Real. Credit: Guillermo Gutierrez Carrasca for Nature

In this photograph, taken on a late summer’s day in the region of Campo de Calatrava in central Spain, I’m tagging a red-legged partridge (Alectoris rufa) with a GPS tracker to help me to monitor the impact of human activity on these and other steppe birds’ lives. I also study two sandgrouse species (Pterocles alchata and Pterocles orientalis) and two types of bustard (Tetrax tetrax and Otis tarda).

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Nature 600, 772 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-03712-y

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