Ornithology Commons^™

Birds Of The Central Platte River Valley And Adjacent Counties, Mary B. Brown, Paul Johnsgard

Zea E-Books

The central Platte River Valley region of Nebraska is described ecologically, and defined as encompassing 11 counties and nearly 10,000 square miles, and extending about 120 miles from the western edge of Lincoln County to the eastern edge of Merrick County. At its center is the Platte River, the historic spring staging area for Sandhill and Whooping cranes, five species of geese, and millions of waterfowl and water-dependent birds, in addition to providing the breeding habitats for more than 100 other bird species. Collectively, at least 373 bird species have been reported from the Central Platte Valley, making it ...

The Search For The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker: Sara Barker And A Team Of Researchers Find Conclusive Evidence That Brings The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Back From 'Extinction', Gerry Boyle

Colby Magazine

An extinct ivory-billed woodpecker in an Arkansas swamp? Sara Barker '94 coordinated the team that quietly searched the swamp to see if the "grail bird" lives.

Winter Ecology Of Sandhill Cranes (Grus Canandensis) In Northern Mexico, Ingrid Barcelo

Dissertations & Theses in Natural Resources

Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis) are a widespread species in North America and one of the most studied cranes in the world. However, most of the research has focused on the breeding grounds of Canada and Alaska and the staging grounds of Nebraska. Although an important proportion of the Mid-continent Population of Sandhill Cranes winters in northern Mexico, little information exists on distribution, status, and ecology of the species in Mexico. The goal of this dissertation was to provide new information on Sandhill Crane winter ecology from a regional perspective to better understand population trends. I examined the physiological state of ...

Avian Habitat Response To Grazing, Haying, And Biofuels Production In Native Warm-Season Forages In The Mid-South, Jessie Lee Birckhead

Masters Theses

Declines in grassland birds have been attributed to loss of habitat, habitat degradation, and changes in land management. In the Mid-South, pasture and hayfield management has focused on maintaining dense stands of non-native forages that do not provide suitable vegetative structure for grassland birds or northern bobwhite. Native warm-season grasses have been promoted for livestock forage and biofuels feedstock. However, little information exists on how these practices affect habitat for grassland songbirds or northern bobwhite in the Mid-South. We conducted a study of two cattle grazing treatments, two hay harvest treatments and a biofuels harvest treatment on vegetative structure for ...

Notes On The Breeding Biology Of The White-Throated Swift In Southern California, Charles T. Collins

Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences

Reproductive activities of White-throated Swifts (Aeronautes saxatalis) were examined from 1997 to 2006 at two nest sites in a human-made structure in southern California. The start of egg-laying was from 27 April to 30 May and hatching of the first chick ranged from 21 May to 23 June; all chicks had fledged by late July, 42–43 days after hatching. The annual molt of adults began in early June and broadly overlapped with the chick-rearing period. Year to year adult survival was minimally 73.9% and nesting pairs showed strong mate and nest site fidelity; pairs reused nests up to ...

Stopover Decisions Of Migratory Shorebirds: An Assessment Of Habitat Use, Food Availability, Behavior And Phenology, Ryan Stutzman

Dissertations & Theses in Natural Resources

Habitat loss and alteration from land use change, species invasion, and more recently, climate change has reduced biodiversity and ecosystem function worldwide. Habitat decisions have important implications to individual fitness as well as population dynamics and community structure. Resource limitation, predation, competition, and unfavorable abiotic conditions all have the potential to influence survival and future reproductive potential. Understanding how changes to ecosystem structure and function impact species and populations of conservation concern is essential for conservation delivery to be effective. Similar to many migratory species, shorebird populations are declining worldwide and declines may be related to the loss of important ...

Nutritional Content Of Rhinoceros Auklet (Cerorhinca Monocerata) Bill Loads, Dustin Taylor, Ron Heintz

STEM Teacher and Researcher (STAR) Program Posters

Nutritional Content of Rhinoceros Auklet Bill Loads

Dustin E Taylor

Abstract

An adult Rhinoceros Auklet (Cerorhinca monocerata) can only catch and carry a limited amount of prey to their nestlings after a foraging trip. The auklets therefore must maximize their efficiency by bringing back the most proportionally nutritious prey items to their nestlings. The prey carried back to the nesting sites (known as a ‘bill load’) can contain whole fish, as well as parts, most commonly fish heads. This study is aimed to determine whether returning with just heads to the nestlings was proportionally more nutritious than bringing back a ...

A Study Of Mexican Free-Tailed Bat Chirp Syllables: Bayesian Functional Mixed Modeling Of Nonstationary Time Series Data With Time-Dependent Spectra, Josue G. Martinez, Kirsten M. Bohn, Raymond J. Carroll, Jeffrey S. Morris

Jeffrey S. Morris

We describe a new approach to analyze chirp syllables of free-tailed bats from two regions of Texas in which they are predominant: Austin and College Station. Our goal is to characterize any systematic regional differences in the mating chirps and assess whether individual bats have signature chirps. The data are analyzed by modeling spectrograms of the chirps as responses in a Bayesian functional mixed model. Given the variable chirp lengths, we compute the spectrograms on a relative time scale interpretable as the relative chirp position, using a variable window overlap based on chirp length. We use 2D wavelet transforms to ...

Environmental Physiology Of Flight In Migratory Birds, Alexander R. Gerson

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Migratory birds complete amazing journeys between their breeding and wintering grounds. Each journey comprises a series of flights that last hours to days, followed by stopovers where fuel stores are replenished. Despite the long flights undertaken by migratory birds, where respiratory water losses are high for extended periods of time, birds are not dehydrated after flight. My studies demonstrate that birds maintain hydration by modulating rates of endogenous water production in response to rates of water loss. In resting, water restricted house sparrows (Passer domesticus) I used quantitative magnetic resonance body composition analysis (QMR) and hygrometry to demonstrate that stressed ...