Data from: Constant companions: Wild zebra finch pairs display extreme spatial cohesion

Many animals maintain long-term monogamous partnerships, but the extent to
which partners interact varies substantially and has implications for the
scope of cooperation between pair members. Zebra finches are monogamously
paired for life, raising questions as to whether and how they maintain
pair cohesion in the absence of having territories and in the absence of
long-range signals. While zebra finches are the best studied songbird in
captivity, their social and spatial behaviour in the wild is poorly
understood. Determining pair cohesion in songbirds to date has almost
exclusively been studied only at specific locations, such as nesting or
feeding sites, where bird presence can be logged incidentally, without
quantifying broader movements. Here, we used automated tracking to
continuously monitor the movements of radio-tagged zebra finch pairs
during a period with breeding activity. We reveal extremely high pair
cohesion with pairs using nearly identical home ranges and maintaining
close spatial proximity throughout the day. This characterisation of
extremely high spatio-temporal coordination of zebra finch pairs provides
novel and important insights into the operation and benefits of monogamous
relationships in highly mobile taxa, such as birds.