A blessing and a curse: Human resources are beneficial but human presence is detrimental for the growth and development of Argya squamiceps (Arabian Babbler)

Human modifications to the environment are having a dramatic effect on biodiversity, but in desert habitats the high abundance of resources near human villages may be beneficial to breeding birds. By collecting high-throughput tracking data on Argya squamiceps (Arabian Babbler), we examined whether nesting and foraging in a village increased nestling growth and development in this social, desert-dwelling species. We placed tags on 10 individuals representing 8 groups of A. squamiceps and 16 nests with nestlings, collecting 191,087 localizations (average = 1,504.6 ± 1,067.4 SE localizations per day). Contrary to our predictions, we found that it was more beneficial for A. squamiceps to have nests farther away from villages—groups nesting farther from villages covered less area when foraging and yet had heavier nestlings. The heaviest nestlings were from nests, where groups spent the highest proportion of time foraging in orchards. This suggests that some level of human resources (ie, orchards) was beneficial but only if combined with otherwise low levels of human presence. Detailed movement data of wild birds, particularly in the context of reproductive success as used here, can further uncover the effects of human disturbance on breeding individuals. This is particularly important in dryland areas, where human impact may elicit nontrivial responses from local wildlife, and which are under-represented in such basic and applied research.