Heavy Migratory Birds Take Shorter Breaks and Reach Their Breeding Grounds Faster

ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2010) — Small migratory birds, like the garden warbler, must make stopovers on their journeys to their breeding grounds. When they have crossed extensive ecological barriers, such as deserts or oceans, they must land to replenish their fat reserves. A researcher from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen and a team of Italian colleagues measured the duration of the stopovers made by garden warblers on an island off the Italian coast. There they observed that fat birds usually move on the night of their arrival, while thin birds interrupt their journey for an average of almost two days.

While pockets of flab accumulated over the winter months may be a source of frustration for some, it can be a cause of joy for others: “Fat garden warblers can make shorter stops to replenish their fat reserves on the taxing annual journey to their breeding grounds,” reports Wolfgang Goymann of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen. The research results have shown that the duration of a bird’s stopover is not only influenced by environmental factors, such as wind and weather conditions, or a genetically-programmed internal urge: subcutaneous fat stores are the main factor behind the varying durations of the stopovers made during avian migration.

The researchers fitted ten fat birds and ten thin birds that landed on the Italian island of Ventotene in the morning on route to the north with temporary adhesive radio transmitters. They then monitored, at regular intervals, whether the signal emitted by the transmitters could still be heard on the island. Nine out of the ten fat birds flew on the same night; the thin birds, however, remained on the island for an average duration of 40 hours before resuming their journey.

“We assume that the majority of the birds arrived on the island the morning we caught them,” says Wolfgang Goymann. “However, even if this were not the case, our data clearly revealed that fat garden warblers only waited until nightfall on the same day to move on. As opposed to this, the thin birds had to wait until they had accumulated sufficient fat reserves for the next leg of their journey.”

The data demonstrates the importance of ecologically-intact resting grounds: The birds can only replenish their energy reserves quickly and move on to their breeding grounds swiftly and unfailingly if they can rest in areas with sufficient supplies of insects, nectar and pollen. Those that arrive early at the breeding ground can secure the best nesting sites.

Adapted from materials provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.

1. Wolfgang Goymann, Fernando Spina, Andrea Ferri and Leonida Fusani. Body fat influences departure from stopover sites in migratory birds: evidence from whole-island telemetry. Biology Letters, 2010; DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2009.1028

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – Researchers have found in Afghanistan the first known breeding area of the large-billed reed warbler, which was dubbed in 2007 as “the world’s least known bird species.”

Researchers for the Wildlife Conservation Society and Sweden’s Gothenburg University said they had found the breeding area in the remote and rugged Wakhan Corridor of north-eastern Afghanistan that has escaped the worst effects of war.

They used field observations, museum specimens, DNA sequencing, and the first known audio recording of the species to find the birds and verified the discovery by capturing and releasing almost 20 birds, the largest number ever recorded.

A preliminary paper on the finding appears in BirdingASIA, describing the discovery in Afghanistan as “a watershed moment” in the study of this bird.

The first specimen of the large-billed reed warbler was discovered in India in 1867 but the second find was not until 2006 in Thailand.

“Practically nothing is known about this species, so this discovery of the breeding area represents a flood of new information on the large-billed reed warbler,” said Colin Poole of WCS’s Asia Program, in a statement.

“This new knowledge of the bird also indicates that the Wakhan Corridor still holds biological secrets and is critically important for future conservation efforts in Afghanistan.”

The find came after Robert Timmins from the WCS was conducting a survey of bird communities in the area.

The Wakhan Corridor has escaped the worst effects of the long years of war suffered elsewhere in Afghanistan since the December 1979 invasion by the Soviet Union. The corridor, populated primarily by Wakhi farmers and yurt-dwelling Kyrghyz herders, is also home to snow leopards and wild Marco Polo sheep.

Timmins heard a distinctive song coming from a small, olive-brown bird with a long bill which he taped and later discovered to be a large-billed reed warbler.

The following summer WCS researchers returned to the same area and used a recording of the song to bring out others and catch almost 20 birds for examination.

The WCS said it is currently the only organization conducting scientific conservation studies in Afghanistan, the first such efforts in over 30 years, and it has contributed to a number of conservation initiatives in tandem with the Afghan government.

It helped produce Afghanistan’s first list of protected species, an action that has led to a ban on hunting snow leopards, wolves, brown bears, and other species.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Miral Fahmy)

Go to Wired Science to read the article and see the photos.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/speciation-in-action/

ScienceDaily (Aug. 30, 2009) — Skylarks can hear the difference between friendly neighbours and dangerous strangers, and deal with any threatening intruders, says new research by scientists at Queen Mary, University of London.

Male skylarks learn to recognise local dialects in their neighbours’ individual songs, remember where each neighbour is supposed to be and reprimand intruders who don’t belong in the neighbourhood, according to a study carried out by Dr. Elodie Briefer, a postdoctoral researcher at Queen Mary’s School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

Published in the Springer journal Naturwissenschaften ¹ this week, Dr. Briefer and her colleagues at the University of Paris South found that skylark neighbours are tolerated if they stay in their own territory, whereas strangers - skylarks who belong to another neighbourhood - are attacked if they intrude too close to the nest.

Researchers also observed the birds’ reactions when they heard the recorded song of another skylark from different directions. The results of the study showed how neighbouring birds who travel too far from their regular territory - a move which is seen as threatening - also run the risk of being attacked.

Males skylarks fiercely guard their chosen home territory, the area of land where they make their nest and hunt for food. The size and position of the male’s territory is also important as female birds check it out before deciding who is going to make the best father to her chicks. Each skylark will usually have several neighbours, living in territories that border his own.

Bird songs are among the most complex sounds produced by animals and the skylark (Alauda arvensis) is one of the most complex of all. The songs are composed of ’syllables’, consecutive sounds produced in a complex way, with almost no repetition. The male skylark can sing more than 300 different syllables, and each individual bird’s song is slightly different.

Dr. Briefer’s research found that the songs of neighbouring skylarks share more syllables with each other than they do with strangers, like a dialect. She says: “This may have evolved because it is safer for the birds to live close together, but they need a way to keep intruders out. By sharing a local dialect in their song, they can keep an ear out for other birds that live nearby and kick any strangers out of the neighbourhood.”

Scientists have discovered a rare new bird species with a bald head.

The creature, dubbed the bare-faced bulbul, was found in Laos, and is the only known bald songbird in mainland Asia.

It’s also the first time in over 100 years that a new Asian species of bulbul bird has been uncovered.

“To find a new bird species is very rare these days,” said Peter Clyne, assistant director for Asia Programs at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. “It’s not like we’re finding new species of birds every year. This is certainly a highly newsworthy event.”

The chrome-domed songbird was discovered by Wildlife Conservation Society scientists Will Duckworth and Rob Timmins and Iain Woxvold of the University of Melbourne as part of a project funded by a mining company, Minerals and Metals Group, that operates in the region.

The bare-faced bulbul lives in the sparse trees and sun-bleached karst limestone of the Laos lowlands.

“Its apparent restriction to rather inhospitable habitat helps to explain why such an extraordinary bird with conspicuous habits and a distinctive call has remained unnoticed for so long,” Woxvold said.

About the size of a thrush, the new bird has olive green feathers on its back and a light-colored breast. Its large dark eyes dominate its bald pink face.

“Whenever you come across a bird that’s bald, it’s a prominent characteristic,” Clyne told LiveScience. “Usually, but not always, it’s thought to play some kind of a role in communication between the sexes.”

The researchers describe the bird’s call as a “series of whistled, dry bubbling notes.”

The researchers describe the new species, whose official name is Passeriformes Pycnonotidae, in the latest issue of the Oriental Bird Club’s scientific journal Forktail.

Collaborative Observatories for Natural Environments

Dezhen Song, Texas A&M
Ken Goldberg, UC Berkeley

http://www.c-o-n-e.org/

CONE-Welder is part of a larger project, CONE, a collaborative effort by computer scientists and engineers from Texas A&M and UC Berkeley consulting with natural scientists and documentary filmmakers. The goal is to advance the fundamental understanding of automated and collaborative systems that combine sensors, actuators, and human input to observe and record detailed natural behavior in remote settings.

Currently, scientific study of animals in situ requires vigilant observation of detailed animal behavior over weeks or months. When animals live in remote and/or inhospitable locations, observation can be an arduous, expensive, dangerous, and lonely experience for scientists. The project will investigate a new class of hybrid teleoperated/autonomous robotic \”observatories\” that allow groups of scientists, via the internet, to remotely observe, record, and index detailed animal activity. Such observatories are made possible by emerging advances in robotic cameras, long-range wireless networking, and distributed sensors.

NSF Award 0535218 (Goldberg) / 0534848 (Song)
Robotics and Robust Intelligence Program
Division of Information and Intelligent Systems
Directorate for Computer Science and Engineering
National Science Foundation

NEW TEXAS PARK: LATEST LINK IN WORLD BIRDING CENTER CHAIN

The newest state park in Texas, and the eighth link in the World Birding Center chain along the breadth of the Rio Grande Valley, will have its opening in Brownsville on 6 December. ,.

The Rasaca de la Palma State Park, with its 1,200 acres, is the largest of the nine sites that currently comprise the World Birding Center. South Padre Island Birding and Nature Center, the final wing of the WBC, is under construction and slated to open in spring of 2009. The other World Birding Center sites are: Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park (WBC headquarters), Edinburg Scenic Wetlands, Estero Llano Grande State Park (Weslaco), Harlingen’s Arroyo Colorado, Old Hidalgo Pump House, Quinta Mazatlan (McAllen), and Roma Bluffs.

Not a state park in the traditional sense, Resaca de la Palma will specifically cater to bird watchers, butterfly enthusiasts, and other nature lovers who seek up-close views of wildlife in a natural setting that includes a restored resaca (an old river oxbow), marshes, dense thorn-scrub, and mature palm and ebony forests. Resaca de la Palma’s most significant habitat is a six-mile resaca that winds through the park.

The opening of the new state park results in part from increased funding provided by the Texas Legislature in 2007. For 2008, the state’s newest wing of the WBC received an $82,000 budget increase. Rio Grande Valley Bird “specialties” at the park include Black-bellied Whistling-Duck, Least Grebe, Groove-billed Ani, Green Jay, Olive Sparrow, and Altamira Oriole.

For more information on the new Park, see:
http://www.worldbirdingcenter.org/sites/brownsville/

For more on all the World Birding Center sites, see:
http://www.worldbirdingcenter.org/

Ninety years of birdwatchers’ notes going online

More than 100 years ago, J.A. Loring had his eyes on the California sky and his hand on a pen.

His hand-scribbled notes, along with those of 3,000 other “citizen scientists,” can be found lining the drawers of green filing cabinets in the basement of a U.S. Geological Survey building in Laurel, Maryland.

These note cards — 6 million of them, spanning almost a century — contain a trove of invaluable information that could help unravel the effects of climate change on bird behavior.

“This is the longest and most comprehensive legacy data set on bird migration that we know to exist,” said Jessica Zelt, who coordinates the North American Bird Phenology Program at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.

The cards include personal observations made by the birders. Their personal information, along with recorded bird data about the abundance, arrival, departure and location of certain species, is all found in these historic records.

Some of the 2-by-5-inch cards date back to the 1880s, when educator Wells W. Cooke founded the North American Bird Phenology Program (BPP), which encouraged amateur ornithologists to record bird sightings around the United States and Canada.

Now, for the first time ever, the paper files are being scanned, transcribed and converted into a digital database for online access.