Thank you to co-authors @sheldonbirds.bsky.social, Josh Firth & Ella Cole, + support and many years of data collection @egioxford.bsky.social @biology.ox.ac.uk !

Our take-home is habitat quality better explains repeatable spatial demography, more so than age. The framework should be used in other systems, where we would expect stronger spatial age structure in longer-lived, lower-turnover species 🐦🌳 7/n

Why so little age clustering? Likely that high site fidelity among survivors coupled with high mortality & immigration → frequent territory turnover. This weakens any stable link between age and quality and erodes repeatable spatial age structure 6/n

We found very little consistent clustering of age in space. In contrast, habitat features were strongly spatially structured, and reproductive output showed modest spatial patterning. Spatial age patterns also shift from year to year 5/n

RESULTS! Older inds are more likely to occupy higher-density territories, & older males (not females) more often occupy sites popular in the longterm. There is little to no link between age and oak abundance or edge distance. Overall, only weak covariation between age and territory quality 4/n

We then asked (1) if territory quality predicts age & (2) whether age tends to cluster in space. We also compared this to how habitat features and reproductive success are arranged, and examined whether any of these spatial patterns are consistent across years 3/n

Using 45 years of data, we defined a territory around each breeding pair, also assigning the age of breeders to those territories. We described territory quality as: how crowded the neighbourhood was, oak density, distance to woodland edge, and how ‘popular’ the site is in the longterm 2/n

We propose four routes to spatial age structure: (1) annual shifts in population age distribution; (2a) older birds gaining higher quality territories; (2b) better territories increasing survival/tenure; (3) edges attracting younger immigrants 1/n

Well (for all of 10 minutes…)! Light was quite low in the AM, and it was slipping in and out of undergrowth. But we had a solid ~2 minutes of uninterrupted views as it foraged c.20ft away before flying off - was very distinctive even in the dull conditions

Yay congratulations Denise!!