Publications

No abstract available.

No abstract available.

Due to declines in the Alaska breeding population, the Steller's eider (Polysticta stelleri) was listed as threatened in North America in 1997. Periodic non-breeding in Russia and Alaska has hampered field-based assessments of behavioral patterns critical to recovery plans, such as levels of breeding site fidelity and movements among three regional populations: Atlantic-Russia, Pacific...

Between 1999 and 2004, Save the Dunes Conservation Fund's Miller Woods Bird Banding Program monitored migrating and breeding bird populations within a high quality black oak, dry-mesic sand savanna/woodland with ridge and swale topography. The objectives of this program were to collect consistent and reliable demographic and abundance data on the bird populations, to investigate long...

The continuing decline in migratory species is depressing. For a 'migration station' to report Northern Cardinal as the species most commonly banded during the autumn months came as a real shock, especially when the cardinal was so far ahead of second-place catbird. I caught twice as many cardinals as all sparrows combined (including juncos), and the total for cardinals came within ten...

Questions about individual variation in “quality” and fitness are of great interest to evolutionary and population ecologists. Such variation can be investigated using either a random effects approach or an approach that relies on identifying observable traits that are themselves correlated with fitness components. We used the latter approach with data from 1,925 individual females of...

Like most other sea ducks, male common eiders (Somateria mollissima) concentrate in large groups to molt following the breeding season. Although Maine conducted surveys in the 1980s, little was known of eider molting sites in Atlantic Canada until recently, when surveys and research conducted in Quebec, Newfoundland, Labrador, Nova Scotia and Maine revealed a number of important molting...

The station was operated on fewer days than usual in 2003, opening a bit later, closing a week early, and missing several good days in September through mid-October, when the manager/lead bander was conducting research on migrating birds in Lower Delmarva. As a result, capture totals for many species are not comparable to other years, and totals for several species, including House Wren...

We welcome the Eden Mill station in northeastern Maryland to Region IV this year. With three stations reporting their worst year ever, we really need to be refreshed. After a cool and wet July, August was hot and wet in the east. Temperatures in September remained close to normal, but thanks to tropical storms Henri (6-8 Sep) and Isabel (18 Sep), rainfall was excessive in the Chesapeake...

The most notable finding at this station in 2003 was the sharp decline in recaptures of previously banded birds and most especially a Crash in the chickadee and titmouse populations. In the autumn of 2001, I recaptured 36 birds banded in previous autumns, but I caught only 24 returns in 2002 and 17 in 2003, a 33% drop each year. In 2002, Tufted Titmouse was my fourth most common species...

In mist-net studies, it is often difficult to use capture-recapture methods to estimate number of birds present. Many investigators use number of birds captured as an index of population size. We investigate the consequences of using indices of bird abundance as surrogates for population size in hypothesis tests. Unless all of the birds present are captured, indices are biased estimates...

Increased population survival rate after an episode of seasonal exploitation is considered a type of compensatory population response. Lack of an increase is interpreted as evidence that exploitation results in added annual mortality in the population. Despite its importance to management of exploited species, there are limited statistical techniques for comparing relative support for...