Publications

A pole, extendable from 2 to 8 m, with a nylon-mesh collecting net, was used to retrieve eggs from nests of Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) in the canopy of floodplain forests. A total of 200 eggs was collected for contaminant analysis from ten colonies along the upper Mississippi River during the spring of 1993. Low egg breakage (1%) and acceptable survival of embryos in an incubator...

Several types of jesses are used to restrain captive raptors. The Hollywood jess described here has been tested on six species during two decades. Like the Aylmeri jess now in common use in North America, the Hollywood jess consists of a removable rolled button jess and an anklet. Unlike the Aylmeri anklet, however, the Hollywood anklet can be removed and reattached without restraining...

Landscape-scale examination of parasitism patterns of Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) revealed heterogeneous parasitism rates across the mosaic of a forest and associated old-field communities. In a two year study in Dutchess County, New York, we found a significantly higher parasitism rate in the forest-interior community (n = 301 nests; 17 species) than on the species in the...

No abstract available.

Hepatic cytochrome P450-associated monooxygenase activities were measured in 11-day-old nestling black-crowned night-herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) collected from a reference site (next to the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, Virginia) and three polluted sites (Cat Island, Green Bay, Lake Michigan, Wisconsin; Bair Island, San Francisco Bay, California; West Marin Island, San...

Field observation of contrasting beach-step behavior at Canaveral National Seashore on two subsequent days when incident-wave conditions in the inner surf zone were similar prompted this re-examination of our conceptual and quantitative understanding of beach steps. These lower-foreshore features are more complex than previously assumed, evolving through erosional as well as accretional...

Breeding Bird Surveys (BBS), which are widely used to monitor trends in avian populations (e.g. Robbins et al. 1989, Sauer and Droege 1993), are conducted along roads but are used to infer changes in regionwide populations. Such inferences may be inaccurate if trends in habitat along roads differ from regionwide trends. For example, if forest cover regionwide remained constant but forest...

Wood ducks (Aix sponsa) nesting along Bayou Meto downstream from a hazardous waste site in central Arkansas were contaminated with polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and dibenzofurans (PCDFs). Residues in eggs, based on 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin equivalents (TCDD-EQ), ranged up to 611 parts per trillion (ppt), and egg arithmetic means were 90-fold higher at the site...

Seasonal movement and migration of Downy Woodpeckers (Picoides pubescens) are indicated in several sources in the literature. Analyses of 3784 recoveries of banded birds, with other data, indicate that the species is resident, and that movements of a few individuals may indicate dispersal.

Waterfowl and passerines in northern Idaho in 1987 had high levels of lead in their blood and tissues that originated primarily from mining and smelting activities. Four Canada geese (Branta canadensis) and one common goldeneye (Bucephala clangula) found dead contained 8 to 38 μg/g (wet mass) of lead in their livers. These levels exceed the lower lethal limit of 5 μg/g in experimental...

No abstract available.

No abstract available.