Monday, April 13, 2009

Daily bird surveys available


I started my daily spring bird surveys last week. I follow a standardized route, and I put my results into eBird, where you can view them by selecting View and Explore Data, Week Report (choose a date), Hotspots in Michigan. Note that there are multiple listings for the natural area here on campus, because other people also put their sightings into eBird. My survey route hotspot is UM--Dearborn--Rouge River Bird Observatory.

Nearly every day, I do extensions to my standard route. I also put these in eBird, but they are not public hotspots. Results are included in daily totals, and I report highlights on RRBO's Latest Sightings page.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Thrush paper published

My paper on the fall stopover ecology of thrushes has finally been published. In addition to all the time it takes to collect data, analyze it, and write a good paper, actually getting it out for all to see is one LONG process! I submitted the paper in April 2008. It went out for peer review, came back to me so that I could respond to questions and comments from the reviewers, and went back to the editors, who approved it in August 2008. Then came the process of checking page proofs for errors and scheduling publication. So at long last, it is in the current issue of the Wilson Journal of Ornithology.

Craves, J. A. 2009. A fifteen-year study of fall stopover patterns of Catharus thrushes at an inland, urban site. Wilson Journal of Ornithology 121:112-118.

You can see the publicly-available abstract and tables at BioOne. I wrote a brief summary of the work last fall here at Net Results.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Banding in Nicaragua: The Birds

As a follow up to my introductory post, I'd like to share some highlights of the birds at Finca Esperanza Verde, and the importance of shade coffee to their survival.

Even more so than the areas we visited in Panama last year, Finca Esperanza Verde and other shade coffee farms are critical to preserving biodiversity of birds and other wildlife in Nicaragua. We were stunned at the deforestation. It's not due to human development, but to agriculture (mostly non-commercial) and cattle grazing. Shade coffee farms appeared to be one of the only land uses that preserved a lot of trees.

During our brief stay, we counted well over 100 species, including nearly two dozen species of migratory songbirds that breed in North America but winter in the tropics. Over 30 species of migrant songbirds have been recorded at the finca, and the overall bird list is approaching 300 species.We observed or banded several species new to the finca ourselves. We banded about 70 birds of over 30 species at Finca Esperanza Verde. For most of the time, we were banding right in the coffee production area.


Here's where we banded. The shorter dark green
shrubs in the foreground are coffee, interspersed with
taller native trees providing shade and habitat.


You know you're off to a good start when the
first bird you band is a Collared Trogon
(Trogon collaris).

The most common North American migrants banded at FEV are Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, Wood Thrush, Worm-eating Warbler, Wilson's Warbler, Kentucky Warbler, and Ovenbird. Although we captured multiple individuals of those species, we rarely if ever saw the other species, with the exception of Wood Thrushes, in our birding walks through the finca. On the other hand, Baltimore Orioles, Chestnut-sided Warblers, and Tennessee Warblers were very common in the coffee production areas, but we didn't capture any. This underscores how well banding supplements surveys for censusing an area. Other common North American migrants included Black-throated Green Warbler, Black-and-white Warbler, and Summer Tanager. The species I've listed in bold are among the 25 priority species targeted by the MoSI program.

Wood Thrushes (Hylocichla mustelina) are the most commonly banded birds at the finca -- migrant or resident.

Yellow-bellied Flycatcher (Empidonax flaviventris).

Worm-eating Warbler (Helmitheros vermivorum).

My husband Darrin weighing a bird with a spring scale.

At times, it was all a blur!

Kentucky Warbler (Oporornis formosus).

Although a limited number of birds have been banded at FEV, especially compared to stations operating for more days per year, between-year recaptures are beginning to occur. North American migrants which have returned to the same tiny areas to spend the winter include Wood Thrush, Wilson's Warbler, Louisiana Waterthrush, and Kentucky Warbler. The fact that these birds are showing strong wintering site fidelity emphasizes the importance of habitat preservation in the tropics. By extension, it also suggests that shade coffee is providing habitat that is worth "coming back to" for these migrants, and that the habitat quality is sufficient that the birds were in good enough shape on departure to survive their northbound journey and consequently return the following year.

Wilson's Warbler (Wilsonia pusilla), a species
showing wintering site fidelity at the finca,
being recaptured in multiple winters. We
also found them common in shade coffee farms in
Panama.


Resident birds are being recaptured between winters,
too. Here Curtis shows off a recaptured Spot-
breasted Wren -- he banded this bird
himself at FEV two years previously!


It's pretty cool seeing familiar birds in unfamilar lands, and especially interesting to see Tennessee Warblers sharing a tree with Keel-billed Toucans, or Chestnut-sided Warblers hopping around with Elegant Euphonias (we also called these "Extraordinary," "Superlative,"or "Especially Elaborate" Euphonias). And seeing tropical birds in the hand is even cooler. Only North American migrants received U.S.-issued bird bands. Resident birds got special site-specific bands, since there is no established banding entity in Latin America coordinating the banding programs there. For each resident bird, we took extensive notes on plumage, measurements, and breeding condition. There is no standard reference for how to determine the age and sex of most tropical birds (in fact, there is no field guide for Nicaraguan birds), or detailed information on life cycle events. All of this data is valuable!

Crimson-collared Tanagers were one of my favorite resident
birds that I banded. But they sure did bite!


Also vying for top spot was this brilliant Blue Bunting.
FEV is at the southern edge of their breeding range,
and this was the first recorded for the finca.
The next day, we caught a female.


Darrin's favorite was this Rufous-browed Peppershrike,
a tropical member of the vireo family. How about
those orange eyes?


We caught and measured, but did not band, a number of species of hummingbirds. The most common was Long-billed Hermit, shown above. We also handled Violet Sabrewing, Rufous-tailed Hummingbird, Stripe-throated Hermit, Violet-crowned Woodnymph, and Stripe-tailed Hummingbirds. I've written more about the resident birds we banded, and given some further details on how FEV compares with other shade coffee farms, at my blog Coffee & Conservation -- with more colorful photos, too!

Once again, I am struck by the importance of shade coffee to birds and biodiversity. Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere, with an unemployment rate over 50%. Outside of the few urban areas, there is little work other than farming. Growing quality coffee under shade in an ecologically responsible way requires a lot of extra work for farmers who are essentially trying to provide for their families after decades of devastating civil war. Many Nicaraguan farmers don't consider the effort worth it -- because consumers are not willing to pay more than a few cents extra for organic or shade-grown coffee.

I can't state it any plainer than this: if you are buying inexpensive, grocery-store coffee you are contributing to the destruction of bird habitat and the decline of migratory songbirds. Bird conservation and great coffee are two of my passions -- and they go hand in hand. That's why I began writing Coffee & Conservation, where you can learn more. On Saturday, May 16, there will be a "Caffeinated Conservation" bird walk here on campus focusing on the connection between coffee and migratory birds; watch the EIC web site for more details.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Banding in Nicaragua: Introduction

Sunset at Finca Esperanza Verde.

I'm back from Nicaragua. It was a busy and rewarding trip, and as promised I'll share with you some highlights of the banding we did at Finca Esperanza Verde (FEV), a shade coffee farm in the central highlands east of Matagalpa. Although it is a widely used tool in North America, bird banding in Latin America is limited by a severe lack of funding, materials, and trained personnel. This situation should be of concern to bird lovers here in the U.S. -- remember that most of "our" breeding birds spend more time on the ground in the tropics in winter than they do here in the breeding season. Yet very little is know about the winter ecology of our birds in the tropics, or its link to overall population health.

To address these questions, the Institute of Bird Populations (IBP) started a program in 2002 called MoSI (the acronym comes from the Spanish "Monitoreo de Sobrevivencia Invernal" or Monitoring Overwintering Survival). Around 150 bird banding stations are located across the American tropics, and the goal is to learn more about physical condition, habitat use, and survivorship over the winter, and how various factors impact subsequent breeding activity. The protocol for these stations requires banding for five, three-day periods each winter. Currently, there are not enough trained banders in the area to operate a bona fide MoSI station at FEV, but any data on the winter ecology of migrant and resident birds is helpful. At FEV, this was the fifth year of a banding project initiated by John Connors and John Gerwin of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Shade coffee at Finca Esperanza Verde. Can you tell
what is coffee and what is natural vegeation?

Most people are aware that deforestation is a big problem in Latin America, and much of it is due to agriculture. Coffee is an understory shrub that naturally grows under the shade of other trees. These types of coffee farms provide very good habitat for birds and other biodiversity, often closely resembling the composition of fauna in natural forests. However, in the last decade or so new types of coffee have been developed that can be grown without the protection of shade, in higher densities, and with higher yield. This "sun coffee" not only results in forests being cleared for intensive coffee growing, but these varieties require high levels of fertilizer, pesticide application, and deplete tropical soils. Thousands of acres of forest in Latin America have been cleared for growing "sun coffee." Bird research -- including bird banding -- has helped us understand the importance of shade-grown coffee to migratory and resident birds. I have read a lot of this research, but nothing can quite compare to participating in it myself!

Mariamar and my husband Darrin get ready to process
a bird at the "Yellow Trail Banding Station" at
Finca Esperanza Verde
.

We joined Curtis Smalling, biologist with North Carolina Audubon and Mariamar Gutierrez, Central American coordinator for MoSI for two days of banding in a section of the coffee farm that had not been maintained in several years. After that, we were joined by Dr. Lynn Moseley and her students from Guilford College for three days of banding in the active coffee production area. During breaks, the students heard short lectures on tropical ecology, birds, and the various uses of banding. Curtis talked about monitoring breeding birds in North Carolina through the Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship program, also run by IBP. Mariamar talked about MoSI. And I gave a talk about how I use banding to do stopover ecology research.

Here I am discussing RRBO's work on stopover
ecology with other members of the group from Guilford
College.

And here I am having my talk interrupted by local
campesinos who use this trail to travel between
villages.

We banded for a couple hours each morning, and a couple of hours in the late afternoon, avoiding the mid-day warmth. The first couple of days we were limited in the number of nets we could open because of windy conditions. Despite our modest efforts, we banded about 70 birds of over 30 species, both residents and wintering migrants. In my next post, I will talk about what species we banded and post more photos!

Learn more:

Friday, February 27, 2009

A tropical adventure

A trip to anywhere in the tropics is always high on my list of great things to do. Over the last 7 years or so, my husband Darrin and I have volunteered our time to a number of organizations operating in the tropics -- usually doing bird surveys or otherwise assisting local ecologists. Our newest opportunity will be next week in Nicaragua.

The bulk of our time will be spent in the montane coffee-growing region of Matagalpa. Some of you know that I have a passion for excellent coffee, and write an entire website devoted to the issues surounding sustainably-grown coffee. Coffee grown under shade in an eco-friendly manner is critical for tropical biodiversity, and for so many of the migrant birds that breed in North America and winter in the tropics. Those of you who are members of Cornell's Lab of Ornithology may have seen the recent article on shade coffee in BirdScope in which I was quoted.

Darrin and I have been invited to participate in an on-going bird banding project initiated by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. In Matagalpa we will be visiting Finca Esperanza Verde (FEV), a shade coffee farm near the village of San Ramon (click on the map to enlarge). We will be banding first with other researchers, and then assisting a group of college students from North Carolina. This project helps to document the birds that use the finca -- both resident species and those that nest in North America but winter in the area, or are on their northbound migration. For example, the most frequently banded North America wintering species at the finca is the Wood Thrush. One of our North Carolina colleagues, Curtis Smalling of North Carolina Audubon, will be working specifically with Golden-winged Warblers.

We will not only band birds, but of course also observe and census birds at FEV. Counter Culture Coffee in Durham, NC sources coffee from FEV and other farms in the San Ramon area; coffee from FEV was one of the top ten coffees in the prestigious 2007 Cup of Excellence program. I'll be providing feedback to Counter Culture about the birds on the farm. I'm excited to admit that I assisted Counter Culture with their choice of the Emerald Toucanet as the bird on their Cafe San Ramon packaging (left). Darrin and I have seen this species at other shade coffee farms in Panama, and knew it was on the finca's bird list.

After we leave FEV, we will be traveling back toward the colonial city of Granada, near the shores of Lake Nicaragua. After a few birding stops en route, including another shade coffee farm, we will be settling in for several days at Domitila, a private wildlife reserve. Domitila represents one of the last and best preserved dry tropical forests in the country. At both FEV and Domitilia, we will be conducting insect surveys, focused on dragonflies and damselflies, to assist with the Insects of Nicaragua inventory being conducted by the Museo Entomológico de León (Entomological Museum of Leon). There is still much to be learned about Nicaraguan insects now that the country is peaceful after so much civil war. We can attest that even well-studied countries like Panama turn up surprises. On our last two trips there, we photographed at least one undescribed species of damselfly, and took the first photograph of a live specimen of another species that was described over 30 years ago. Who knows what we might turn up in Nicaragua!

When we return, I will be writing an article on the importance of shade grown coffee to birds, incorporating my experiences, for Birder's World Magazine.

Of course, I will also share as much as I can with you here at Net Results. Be patient: for most of the trip, we will not have Internet access (or electricity, or hot running water!), so I will have to wait to return home to post updates when I am not busy catching up and getting ready for spring migration.