Joseph Fleskes (Former Employee)

Conservation efforts to restore historic waterbird distribution and abundance in the Central Valley of California require information on current and historic areas of waterbird habitat. To provide this information, we mapped the area of agricultural fields in the vicinity of the historic Tulare Lake Bed in the Tulare Basin, California, that were treated postharvest with two different...

Information on the molecular detection of hematozoa from different tissue types and multiple years would be useful to inform sample collection efforts and interpret results of meta-analyses or investigations spanning multiple seasons. In this study, we tested blood and muscle tissue collected from northern pintails (Anas acuta) during autumn and winter of different years to evaluate...

Waste rice seed is an important food for wintering waterfowl and current estimates of its availability are needed to determine the carrying capacity of rice fields and guide habitat conservation. We used a line-intercept method to estimate mass-density of rice seed remaining after harvest during 2010 in the Sacramento Valley (SACV) of California and compared results with estimates from...

We surveyed birds on grain and non-grain fields in the Tulare Basin of California treated post-harvest with two types of flooding that varied in duration and depth of water applied (Flooded-type fields [FLD]: 1 week; Irrigated-type fields [IRG]:

The current network of weather surveillance radars within the United States readily detects flying birds and has proven to be a useful remote-sensing tool for ornithological study. Radar reflectivity measures serve as an index to bird density and have been used to quantitatively map landbird distributions during migratory stopover by sampling birds aloft at the onset of nocturnal...

We developed and evaluated the performance of a metapopulation model enabling managers to examine, for the first time, the consequences of alternative management strategies involving habitat conditions and hunting on both harvest opportunity and carrying capacity (i.e., equilibrium population size in the absence of harvest) for migratory waterfowl at a continental scale. Our focus is on...

Northern pintail Anas acuta (hereafter, pintail) populations have declined substantially throughout the western US since the 1970s, largely as a result of converting wetlands to cropland. Managed wetlands have been developed throughout the San Francisco Bay estuaries to provide wildlife habitat, particularly for waterfowl. Many of these areas were historically tidal baylands and plans...

Although wild waterfowl are the main reservoir for low pathogenic avian influenza viruses (LPAIv), the environment plays a critical role for the circulation and persistence of AIv. LPAIv may persist for extended periods in cold environments, suggesting that waterfowl breeding areas in the northern hemisphere may be an important reservoir for AIv in contrast to the warmer southern...

No abstract available.

Radar systems designed to detect avian activity at airfields are useful in understanding factors that influence the risk of bird and aircraft collisions (bird strikes). We used an avian radar system to measure avian activity at Beale Air Force Base, California, USA, during 2008 and 2009. We conducted a 2-part analysis to examine relationships among avian activity, bird strikes, and...

Rice seed remaining in commercial fields after harvest (waste rice) is a critical food resource for wintering waterfowl in rice-growing regions of North America. Accurate and precise estimates of the seed mass density of waste rice are essential for planning waterfowl wintering habitat extents and management. In the Sacramento Valley of California, USA, the existing method for obtaining...

Flightless and post-molt survival and movements were studied during August-May, 2001-2002, 2002- 2003 and 2006-2007 for 181 adult female Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos). Birds were radiotagged just before or early in their flightless period on four wetlands that differed in size on Klamath Basin (KB) National Wildlife Refuge complex. Flightless survival varied among years but was higher on...