Folia Zool. – 52(3): 249–258 (2003) Seasonal home range shift of red deer hinds, Cervus elaphus: are there feeding reasons? László SZEMETHY 1 , Katalin MÁTRAI 1 , Krisztián KATONA 1 * and Szilvia OROSZ 2 1 St. Stephen University, Department of Wildlife Biology and Management, Páter K. u. 1, H-2103 GödöllŒ, Hungary; e-mail: szlaci@ns.vvt.gau.hu, mkati@ns.vvt.gau.hu, katonak@ns.vvt.gau.hu 2 St. Stephen University, Department of Nutrition, Páter K. u. 1, H-2103 GödöllŒ, Hungary; e-mail: szorosz@fau.gau.hu Received 1 August 2002; Accepted 10 April 2003 A b s t r a c t . This work shows records of seasonal home range shift of radio collared red deer hinds (Cervus elaphus L., 1758) in southern Hungary from a forested block to the surrounding agricultural area every June between 1994–2000. Better quality of agricultural than forest forages is suggested as the main reason for this shift. Two hypotheses were tested: i) red deer consume mainly cultivated plants in the agricultural area and ii) agricultural plants are more nutritious than those in the forest at the time of home range shifting. Composition of forest and agricultural diet was determined by microhistological faeces analysis and the nutritive quality was assessed by the amount of crude protein and crude fibre content. Red deer diet was dominated by browse in the forest (65–85 %) whilst, in agricultural fields, wood species were as important as grasses (26–44 and 39–55 %, respectively). Consumption of cultivated plants was low (under 10 %) in the agricultural area. Nutritive quality of the diet was lower at the agricultural site than in the forest due to lower crude protein and higher crude fibre content. Seasonal home range shift of red deer hinds therefore, could not be explained by better nutritive quality of agricultural plants only. We suggest other factors that could potentially explain this behaviour. Key words: diet composition, habitat change, nutritive quality, faeces analysis, forest-agriculture habitat Introduction Red deer (Cervus elaphus L., 1758) home range has been investigated in several studies (G e o r g i i 1980, G e o r g i i & S c h r ö d e r 1983, C a t t & S t a i n e s 1987, C l u t t o n - Brock & A lbon 1989, C a r r a n z a et al. 1991, S z e m e t h y et al. 1998). Differences in study areas implied diversified behaviour of red deer. For instance, a strong site-fidelity by female red deer was shown in Scotland (C a t t & S t a i n e s 1987, C o n r a d t et al. 1999). Several studies have shown a seasonal home range shift of large herbivores (E s c o s & Alados 1992, B o r k o w s k i & F u r u b a y a s h i 1998). For instance, studies on North-American white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) (K a m m e r m e y e r & Marchinton 1976) found long-distance seasonal movements in stags and suggested that this was due to the intrasexual competition. The same was argued for the dispersion of red deer stags by B o b e k et al. (1987). In red deer hinds, however, seasonal changes in availability of food were invoked as the main reason explaining alteration of habitat use (G e o r g i i 1980, S c h m i d t 1993). Radiotelemetry studies conducted in our study area since 1994 (S z e m e t h y et al. 1998) have shown a seasonal home range shift in 9 of 27 radio collared red deer hinds. The remaining part of the marked hinds stayed stable in the forest throughout the year. These 249 * Corresponding author