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Full-Text Articles in Ornithology

The History And Significance Of Taxidermy Bird Collections In North America: Bgsu's Own Undervalued Collection And Its Future, Kristin Burnside Apr 2023

The History And Significance Of Taxidermy Bird Collections In North America: Bgsu's Own Undervalued Collection And Its Future, Kristin Burnside

Honors Projects

Taxidermy, despite its association with the bizarre and outlandish, has a rich history and culture that helped to define post-Civil War America and its pursuit of knowledge and reconnection with nature. With the widespread publication and availability of how-to guides, natural history collecting and taxidermy became accessible to any individual regardless of age, gender, or class. The hobby required physicality and courage to collect unique and interesting specimens, and intellect and creativity to conserve and display them, all of which inherently connected the avocation with respect. With varying levels of success, hobbyists experimented with different chemicals, such as arsenic, in …


Bird Articulation Guide, Kelsey Blaze Miller Jan 2023

Bird Articulation Guide, Kelsey Blaze Miller

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

No abstract provided.


Songbird-Mediated Insect Pest Control In Low Intensity New England Agriculture, Samuel J. Mayne Mar 2022

Songbird-Mediated Insect Pest Control In Low Intensity New England Agriculture, Samuel J. Mayne

Masters Theses

Global agricultural intensification has caused large-scale wildlife declines, but agricultural lands that maintain natural habitats can support healthy wildlife populations and receive significant ecosystem services from these natural communities. However, how on-farm biodiversity results in beneficial ecosystem services is highly variable and is reported to differ among taxa and guilds. One group that has attracted attention for their potential beneficial role in reducing pest abundance are birds. Understanding the role of bird communities and individual species in pest control could be important for managing farms under a low intensity agroecological framework. In New England, farmers are increasingly applying low intensity …


Evaluating Population Genetic Structure And Potential Genomic Signals Of Natural Selection In A Migratory Songbird (Protonotaria Citrea), Tyler A. Hohenstein Jan 2022

Evaluating Population Genetic Structure And Potential Genomic Signals Of Natural Selection In A Migratory Songbird (Protonotaria Citrea), Tyler A. Hohenstein

Theses and Dissertations

In this study I attempted to further resolve the population genetic structure in the Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citrea), and conducted an outlier SNP analysis and exploratory gene ontology analysis to investigate potential ongoing natural selection in the species. This analysis of population structure confirms previous work by DeSaix et al. (2019), where weak population structure was observed between eastern sites along the Atlantic Coastal Plain, and western sites in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley, possibly due to a genetic discontinuity across the Appalachian Mountains. I conducted two forms of outlier SNP analyses, a principal component analysis (PCA)-based approach to identify SNPs …


Ecology And Conservation Of Shrubland Bird Communities In The Eastern Ghats Of Indi, Anant Deshwal Dec 2019

Ecology And Conservation Of Shrubland Bird Communities In The Eastern Ghats Of Indi, Anant Deshwal

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Anthropogenic disturbance, in its multiple facets represents a major threat to biodiversity and habitat quality. Consequently, extensive research is guided towards understanding anthropogenic disturbance and their effects on wildlife for development of wildlife management plans. However, for development of effective wildlife management plans it is imperative that we understand the habitat use and preference by local fauna along with effects of anthropogenic presence. In this dissertation, I studied the habitat usage and preferences of Shrubland birds in the Eastern Ghats of India during the pre-monsoon and post monsoon seasons. Eastern Ghats show a marked difference from pre-monsoon season to post-monsoon …


Where Birds Chill: An Assessment Of The Habitat Preferences Of Birds Overwintering In Hudson Valley Forests, Elizabeth Claire Axley Jan 2019

Where Birds Chill: An Assessment Of The Habitat Preferences Of Birds Overwintering In Hudson Valley Forests, Elizabeth Claire Axley

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Many avian species overwinter in eastern North America; however, studies on bird populations are rarely undertaken during this critical survival time, and little is known as to their habitat preferences and foraging behavior. In this observational study, we performed a survey of birds overwintering in the Hudson Valley’s temperate, primarily-deciduous forests, assessing avian populations’ habitat preferences through the vegetative structural variables surrounding overwintering birds as they forage. Our results suggest that high canopy cover is critically important to predicting overwintering bird occupancy on a microhabitat scale. Moreover, overwintering birds preferentially occupy forest plots not dominated by sugar maples, in spite …


Vegetation Characteristics And Bird Communities Associated With Singing Painted Buntings In Northwest Arkansas, Lauren Kristina Thead Dec 2018

Vegetation Characteristics And Bird Communities Associated With Singing Painted Buntings In Northwest Arkansas, Lauren Kristina Thead

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It has been shown that bird communities are affected by the species composition and physical structure of plant communities. Within avian communities, the bird species that are the most localized in distribution tend to be the most affected by habitat changes. My research analyzed plant and bird communities found with the Painted Bunting (Passerina ciris Linnaeus), a locally common but declining species throughout much of its range. First, I describe vegetation characteristics associated with singing male Painted Buntings in northwest Arkansas. I categorized field sites with singing male Painted Buntings as either managed for wildlife or unmanaged, based on land-use …


Time-Activity And Energy Budgets Of Eared Grebes (Podiceps Nigricollis) At Salton Sea, Samantha San Francisco May 2017

Time-Activity And Energy Budgets Of Eared Grebes (Podiceps Nigricollis) At Salton Sea, Samantha San Francisco

Theses

Time-activity budgets have been a widely accepted way of approximating the daily energy expenditure of many species, including waterbirds. For this study, focal animal sampling was used to study Eared Grebes (Podiceps nigricollis) at their post-wintering stopover site, Salton Sea. Daylight time-activity budgets were converted to energy budgets using energy equivalents for diving, preening, swimming, and resting on water developed for Eared Grebes previously by H. I. Ellis (1994). Post-wintering Eared Grebes arrive at Salton Sea in waves at differing times in the spring. As a result, there can be individuals in a variety of physiological states during …


Changes In Spring Arrival And Fall Departure Dates Of Migratory Birds As An Indication Of Local Climate Change: A Phenological Study Of New York State's Capital Region Using Citizen Science, Olivia C. Townsend Jun 2014

Changes In Spring Arrival And Fall Departure Dates Of Migratory Birds As An Indication Of Local Climate Change: A Phenological Study Of New York State's Capital Region Using Citizen Science, Olivia C. Townsend

Honors Theses

Climate change is becoming an increasingly important topic of scientific research, and studies commonly analyze biological indicators. Migratory birds are responsive to environmental changes because life cycles depend on finding proper seasonal locations. eBird is a citizen science database launched by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society in 2002, and this study focused on eBird data to analyze migratory shifts over the past two decades for the Green-winged Teal (Anas crecca), Northern Pintail (Anas acuta), Bufflehead (Bucephala albeola), Common Goldeneye (Bucephala clangula), Common Merganser (Mergus merganser), Red-breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator), Canada Goose (Branta canadensis), Snow Goose (Chen …


Insights From Project Feederwatch: Changes In The Abundance And Occurrence Of Birds In New Hampshire Over The Past 24 Years, Lee A. Sutcliffe Jan 2014

Insights From Project Feederwatch: Changes In The Abundance And Occurrence Of Birds In New Hampshire Over The Past 24 Years, Lee A. Sutcliffe

Honors Theses and Capstones

Changes in the climate and land use over time can lead to changes in the composition of wildlife communities. Using data from Project FeederWatch, we examine trends in the abundance and occurrence of birds documented in the winters from 1988 to 2012 in New Hampshire. Changes in abundance and occurrence are summarized for individual bird species as well as across species based on life history traits. In addition, we examined trends for the state as a whole as well as in subregions. We discuss these changes with regards to the variations of climate and land use that are occurring throughout …


The Breeding Biology Of The Western Tanager (Piranga Ludoviciana), Gary G. Benson Jan 1971

The Breeding Biology Of The Western Tanager (Piranga Ludoviciana), Gary G. Benson

All Master's Theses

In 1969 a two-year study was undertaken in an effort to enlarge our knowledge of the life history of the western tanager (Piranga ludoviciana). Bent (1958) summarizes the literature on the western tanager, and a review of his work clearly shows an almost total absence of detailed information on the species' life history. To obtain this information, observations were conducted from 1 May through 29 July 1969. A few observations were made during the 1968 breeding season.


Breeding Biology Of The Sage Thrasher, John Wayne Gooding Aug 1970

Breeding Biology Of The Sage Thrasher, John Wayne Gooding

All Master's Theses

The sage thrasher, Oreoscontes montanus (Townsend), is a common bird that breeds throughout the sage brush areas of the Great Basin and from northern Arizona to southern Saskatchewan. Although it is a fairly common and conspicuous bird, almost nothing about its life history has been published. This study was conducted in central Washington during the spring and summer of 1969 and the spring and early summer of 1970. During the 1969 season, emphasis was placed on finding and tracing the phenologies of as many nests as possible in order to determine the timing of the nesting cycle. During the 1970 …