The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) is a registered charity which funds studies on birds in the UK and beyond. The charity works closely with volunteers through a wide range of citizen science led projects such as the breeding bird survey, the ringing scheme, garden birdwatch and Birdtrack.
Though the talk was called ‘monitoring wader’ it focused
mainly on breeding curlew in the UK. There is good reason for this as curlews
have had a 87% contraction in range and a 68% decrease in breeding numbers
since 1995. Because of this curlew’s are now red listed and are considered by
many ornithologists as the bird of highest conservation concern in the UK. The
conference was split into 3 parts though I will focus more on the first 2 here as
these were of most interest to me.
The first part was an early insight into new research by BTO
Cymru of breeding curlews here in North Wales given by Katherine Bowgen who also lectures at Bangor. The study involved catching and
tagging 26 adult breeding curlews to be able to track their movements: with the
tag naturally falling off around the time of hatching. Receivers were placed
around the sites to record the curlew location which also meant the tags did
not have to be retrieved; though some movements were missed if the birds moved
too far away e.g., if the nest failed resulting in abandonment. The preliminary
results showed how tagging can be used to identify key location used during
breeding which could then be protected. By using the data on location and
distance from the nest it is possible to calculate when the bird has laid its
eggs and when they have hatched as well as whether it was successful or not so
can be used to measure productivity. This study could also be important when mitigating against the impacts farming has including the destruction of nest by silage cutting by identify exact nest sites.
The second speaker shared an update on his PhD research into breeding curlew in the Brecks, East Anglia. The study involved long hours spent in the field watching curlews to identify nest sites which was used to calculate number of pairs and productivity. The most exciting result from the study was the number of pairs found (c150) which equalled the total number of pairs thought to be breeding in the lowlands whole of the UK! The study also found the importance of MOD land for breeding curlew due to low disturbance and open areas with short vegetation. The study also hopes to identify the main causes of nest failure.
The final speaker evaluated the use of thermal imagers when
censusing waders or in this case jack snipe. Jack snipes are elusive waders
that can be hard to find and even harder to monitor; thermal imagers could be
the future to monitor population size, which has been done in the past by flushing birds
resulting in unnecessary disturbance. The
study also discussed the future importance thermal imagers may have in locating
and monitoring breeding birds.
The conference gave me an insight into the different studies currently being undertaken by the BTO. For each study, the speakers explained the reason, method, analysis and results in a high level of detail which will help when writing reports such as my dissertation (which is also studying waders). As technology continues to advance, GPS tags and the like will become ever more useful in study behaviour and movements of animals. The use of thermal imagers was also very interesting and will no doubt become an important part of many future ornithological studies.
Comments
Post a Comment