Abstract
Human activities often negatively affect the time birds spend on activities such as parental care, foraging and resting. Forms of antipredator behaviour among birds such as vigilance can be an adaptation to human disturbances which can enhance their fitness in human‐managed habitats. We studied the flight initiation distance (FID) of White Storks Ciconia ciconia foraging on hay meadows during their breeding season. Our study showed that farm work, the type of meadows and starting distance (the distance between the bird’s position and the observer at the start of his walk) all had an influence on FID. Conversely, the numbers of storks in a particular foraging flock had no effect on an individual bird’s FID. The lower FID could have been due to the presence of machinery operating in the meadows, because storks then have opportunities to catch energy-rich prey that has been scared off by the machines. Unlike meadows cleared of hay, mown meadows with cut grass are more attractive to storks, and the FID there is shorter. The starting distance positively affected stork responses. These findings suggest that the FID of White Storks, treated as a measure of the risk of predation, depends largely on the degree of attractiveness of the feeding grounds.