Breeding bird survey data

• North American Breeding Bird Survey
  • Managed by United States Geological Survey
  • Collected by volunteers
  • Over 4100 survey routes located across the U.S. and Canada
  • Each route is 24.5 miles with stops situated every 0.5 miles
  • At each stop a 3-min point count is conducted. Every bird that seen withing 0.25 miles or heard is recorded.

• In-class example using bobwhite quail data.

• Overview of bobwhite quail
  • Widely distributed species
  • Hunted in Kansas but listed as a species at Risk under SARA in Canada
  • Data collection
    • Many state agencies collect ‘whistle count’ or other types of long-term survey data
    • North American Breeding Bird Survey
• What is going on with bobwhite quail population numbers?
  • BBS trend analysis
    • United States
      • Kansas
      • Nebraska
      • Ohio
    • Canada
• Accessing breeding Bird Survey data
  • Several ways to obtain the raw data
    • Download from website
    • Using program R
      • rBBS package
• What research questions related to bobwhite quail could be answered using the Breeding bird survey data?
  • Group discussion
• Determining if a research question has already been answered
  • Google scholar
  • Other research tools
• Pairing with other data sets
  • Weather data
  • Land use and land cover data