Overlevingsstrategieën bij de Wespendief Pernis apivorus en de invloed daarvan op het aantal broedgevallen in de zes deelgebieden van het Noord-Kennemerlands Duin

Two of the seven Honey-Buzzard species - Eastern Honey-buzzard Pernis orientalis and Western Honey-buzzard Pernis apivorus - not only protect themselves by imitating the plumage of Hawk Eagles (especially Spizaetus in Southeast Asia en Hieraaetus in Africa), but also by not breeding in tropical forests where they are vulnerable to attack from larger raptors and owls. Breeding in the (west of the) Palearctic, however, is not without dangers either. In the 1990s, when the first successful breeding attempt of the Honey-buzzard was discovered in the dunes between Camperduin and Wijk aan Zee, elsewhere in The Netherlands nest failure caused by predation already amounted to 16-25% (nowadays 40-45%). In the dunes between Camperduin and Wijk aan Zee, 22 of the 26 Honey-buzzard nests (85%) were successful between 2005 and 2014. In two cases (8%) the nests probably failed because of predation by Goshawk Accipiter gentilis and Pine Marten Martes martes. In two other nests probably no eggs were laid. Honey-buzzards were mostly found breeding in coniferous forest with low numbers of Goshawks: the Spearman rank correlation between the number of succesful breeding attempts of Honey-buzzards in the six subregions in 2005-14 and the number of succesful breeding attempts of the Goshawk per 1000 hectares coniferous forest per year is -.96 (p=.003).