The Sonoran Joint Venture has been supporting long-term ecological monitoring for decades. This spring we partnered with the Tucson Audubon Society (TAS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to revive a Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) bird banding station in the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area in southeast Arizona. This station was previously [...]
While “Motus” may seem like the latest bird conservation buzzword, the Motus Wildlife Tracking System (Motus) is a program of Birds Canada that was launched in 2014. It has continued to gain popularity as a tool to study the ecology and conservation of migratory animals. Radio telemetry has been used since the 1960’s to track [...]
A Different Perspective on Spring Migration I have never seen a Yellow-billed Loon in full breeding plumage, which isn't surprising when you consider the range map below. Living in southcentral Alaska, and seeing other species of loons with some frequency, the Yellow-billed Loon piqued my interest. Ten years ago they were a candidate species for [...]
By Amelia DuVall, Seabird and Habitat Restoration Ecologist, California Institute of Environmental Studies This article was originally published by the Sonoran Joint Venture and reposted with permission. Scripps’s Murrelets typically lay two-egg clutches. Chicks spend just two days in the nest before heading out to sea with parents (photo courtesy of Darrell Whitworth). On a [...]
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s (FWS) Migratory Bird Program is currently developing ProjectFlockTogether: an online crowdsourcing platform that will invite bird enthusiasts and citizen scientists to participate in important, cutting-edge conservation research. Each year, the FWS conducts aerial visual surveys by flying small planes over North America’s wetlands and coasts, in order to monitor [...]
Across the globe, citizen scientists are informing bird conservation by reporting on their local birds. The information sheds light on species distribution, population trends, and how landscape level changes are affecting bird habitats. Engaging in citizen science also promotes a greater understanding of the role and values of birds in the natural world. The upcoming 2016 [...]
Bird conservation partners in the Atlantic Coast Joint Venture (ACJV) are now closer to having a full complement of Bird Conservation Region (BCR) Plans that cover our entire geographic area. Currently, BCR plans exist for the Atlantic Northern Forest (14), Lower Great Lakes/St. Lawrence Plain (13), New England/Mid-Atlantic Coast (30), Piedmont (29), and the eastern [...]
Researchers from the University of Maine Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Conservation Biology and the USGS Cooperative Wildlife Research Units at the University of Maine and the West Virginia University recently finished the field work on an investigation of bird distributions in the Northern Forest region of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The Northeast Region [...]
Studies conducted by Fabiola Rodriguez and Jeff Larkin of Indiana University of Pennsylvania identified Wood Thrush as one of the most abundant migratory birds in remnant dry forest patches of Honduras. This is of particular interest as Wood Thrush are usually associated with moister conditions. The study was part of a project to evaluate the [...]
The Appalachian Region is known for its extensive tracts of mature hardwood forest and high biodiversity, including that of songbirds. The region is a stronghold for the cerulean warbler, containing about 75 percent of the population. But the bird is a species of high conservation concern due in part to an estimated 70 percent population [...]