A simple but effective method for identifying incubation in real time for waterfowl with backpack transmitters

With the rapid development of tracking technologies revealing fine‐scale information on animal movements, several methods have been developed to identify nesting behaviour in birds retrospectively. However, some research questions require nesting behaviour to be identified in real time such that nests and/or broods can be visually observed. In this study, we developed a method for two dabbling duck species (Mallard Anas platyrhynchos and American Black Duck A. rubripes ) to identify incubation behaviour in real time with high accuracy (99% success rate when visually confirming nests) by plotting two summary metrics calculated from global positioning system (displacement distance between days) and tri‐axial acceleration data (daily mean absolute x ‐axis value). We encourage practitioners to modify our approach for their research questions and study species for near real‐time classification of nesting attempts.