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In Sparrow, award-winning science and natural history writer Kim Todd explores the bird\"s complex history, biology, and literary tradition. Todd describes the difference between Old World sparrows, like the house sparrow, which can nest in a garage or in an airport, and New World sparrows, which often stake their claim to remote islands or meadows in the high Sierra. In addition, she looks at the nineteenth-century Sparrow War in the United States--a battle over the sparrow\"s introduction--which set the stage for decades of discussions of invasive species. She examines the ways in which sparrows have taught us about evolution and the shocking recent decline of house sparrows in cities globally--this disappearance of a bird that seemed hardwired for success remains an ornithological mystery.

The double-crested cormorant, found only in North America, is an iridescent black waterbird superbly adapted to catch fish. It belongs to a family of birds vilified since biblical times and persecuted around the world. Thus it was perhaps to be expected that the first European settlers in North America quickly deemed the double-crested cormorant a competitor for fishing stock and undertook a relentless drive to destroy the birds. This enormously important book explores the roots of human-cormorant conflicts, dispels myths about the birds, and offers the first comprehensive assessment of the policies that have been developed to manage the double-crested cormorant in the twenty-first century.Conservation biologist Linda Wires provides a unique synthesis of the cultural, historical, scientific, and political elements of the cormorant's story. She discusses the amazing late-twentieth-century population recovery, aided by protection policies and environment conservation, but also the subsequent U.S. federal policies under which hundreds of thousands of the birds have been killed. In a critique of the science, management, and ethics underlying the double-crested cormorant's treatment today, Wires exposes \"management\" as a euphemism for persecution and shows that the current strategies of aggressive predator control are outdated and unsupported by science.

Bird strikes are one of the most dangerous threats to civil and military flight safety: between 1960 and 2014, they were responsible for the destruction of approximately 150 civil aircraft and the deaths of 271 people. This book presents a summary of the damage imposed on the aviation industries by their avian counterparts. This book first presents and analyzes the statistics obtained from bird strike databases and offers various methods for minimizing the overall probability of bird-strike events. The next chapters explore how to analyze the ability of aero-engine critical structures to withstand bird-strike events by implementing reliable experimental, theoretical, and numerical methods. Finally, the book investigates the impact of bird strikes on different components of aircrafts, such as the metal fuselage, composite fuselage, engines, wings, and tail, and proposes two new bird models, with explanations of their use.

Overview of Ecosystem Services Provided by Birds Birds are the best-known class of vertebrate animals, occur worldwide in nearly all habitats, and provide many services (Sekercioglu 2006a, b; Whelan et al. 2008). [...] they are an ideal group to examine for ecosystem service valuation.

Insect-feeding birds may interfere with trophic interactions in plant–insect food webs, which may be particularly important in agroecosystems. Here, we studied how Eurasian Tree Sparrows (Passer montanus) affect aphids and their predators in cereal fields using bird exclusion experiments. The Tree Sparrows fed their nestlings with aphid antagonists. Hoverflies and ladybird beetles accounted for 77% of the food for the nestlings during peak aphid density. When birds were excluded, densities of hoverfly larvae, which were the most abundant aphid predator group in the cereals, were 4% higher in wheat and 45% higher in oat, while aphid densities were 24% lower in wheat and 26% lower in oat. The demonstrated disruption of biological control by mesopredators through bird predation may be a common phenomenon in cropping systems characterized by small-sized and abundant pest species. Management of biotic interactions such as biological control needs a broad food-web perspective, even in simplified agroecosystems.

Global increases in both agriculture and biodiversity awareness raise a key question: Should cropland and biodiversity habitat be separated, or integrated in mixed land uses? Ecosystem services by wildlife make this question more complex. For example, birds benefit agriculture by preying on pest insects, but other habitat is needed to maintain the birds. Resulting land use questions include what areas and arrangements of habitat support sufficient birds to control pests, whether this pest control offsets the reduced cropland, and the comparative benefits of “land sharing” (i.e., mixed cropland and habitat) vs. “land sparing” (i.e., separate areas of intensive agriculture and habitat). Such questions are difficult to answer using field studies alone, so we use a simulation model of Jamaican coffee farms, where songbirds suppress the coffee berry borer (CBB). Simulated birds select habitat and prey in five habitat types: intact forest, trees (including forest fragments), shade coffee, sun coffee, and unsuitable habitat. The trees habitat type appears to be especially important, providing efficient foraging and roosting sites near coffee plots. Small areas of trees (but not forest alone) could support a sufficient number of birds to suppress CBB in sun coffee; the degree to which trees are dispersed within coffee had little effect. In simulations without trees, shade coffee supported sufficient birds to offset its lower yield. High areas of both trees and shade coffee reduced pest control because CBB was less often profitable prey. Because of the pest control service provided by birds, land sharing was predicted to be more beneficial than land sparing in this system.

We analyzed population change for 420 bird species from the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) using a hierarchical log-linear model and compared the results with those obtained through route-regression analysis. Survey-wide trend estimates based on the hierarchical model were generally more precise than estimates from the earlier analysis. No consistent pattern of differences existed in the magnitude of trends between the analysis methods. Survey-wide trend estimates changed substantially for 15 species between route-regression and hierarchical-model analyses. We compared regional estimates for states, provinces, and Bird Conservation Regions; differences observed in these regional analyses are likely a consequence of the route-regression procedure's inadequate accommodation of temporal differences in survey effort. We used species-specific hierarchical-model results to estimate composite change for groups of birds associated with major habitats and migration types. Grassland, aridland, and eastern-forest-obligate bird species declined, whereas urban—suburban species increased over the interval 1968–2008. No migration status group experienced significant changes, although Nearctic—Neotropical migrant species showed intervals of decline and permanent resident species increased almost 20% during the interval. Hierarchical-model results better portrayed patterns of population change over time than route-regression results. We recommend use of hierarchical models for BBS analyses.

1. Red-billed queleas Quelea quelea are major pests of small-grain crops throughout sub-Saharan Africa. When conditions permit, birds breed in vast colonies which are targets for control operations. Queleas are intra-African long-distance migrants whose complex movements vary annually according to variations in rainfall patterns. An ability to forecast where and when colonies could be established will greatly improve the efficiency of control measures. We describe such a forecasting model for the southern African subspecies Q. q. lathamii. 2. The model is based on and provides a partial test of the conjectured rainfall-migration model of Ward (1971 ), whereby quelea movements are determined by rainfall patterns and grass seed availability. We consider that a threshold quantity of rainfall (shown here to be c. 60 mm) within any 2 weeks at the start of the wet season is necessary to cause annual grass seeds to germinate, forcing queleas to emigrate. Only if rainfall exceeds another threshold (240 mm within a 6-week span and at least 6 weeks elapsed after the 60-mm threshold had been exceeded), allowing production of fresh seed, can queleas return and commence breeding. Birds may breed again in the same season by undertaking further long-distance 'breeding migrations' to areas where sufficient rain had fallen even later. 3. Using only estimates of rainfall derived from satellite data, we describe a simple spatio-temporal model for southern Africa to show at weekly intervals those areas where (a) the wet season has not yet started; (b) the early rains migration threshold has been exceeded; (c) the threshold to permit breeding has been exceeded; and (d) conditions are no longer suitable for new colonies to be established. 4. Synthesis and applications. The model was run for three seasons and performed well compared to an expected null distribution of breeding colonies among quarter-degree grid squares. In 2002/2003 and 2004/2005, but not in 2003/2004, quelea colonies were reported significantly more often in grid squares where the model had predicted breeding to be possible. However, in a more refined analysis of a smaller subset of colonies for which precise dates of their establishment were known, their spatio-temporal distribution matched predictions in 95%, 85% and 99% of grid squares, respectively, over the three breeding seasons. These success rates show that predictions from the model, the first of its kind for any African bird, can aid the planning of quelea control strategies.

The newly described technique of extracting corticosterone (CORT) from bird feathers may serve as a less invasive, more integrated measure of a bird's stress response. Previous work indicated that elevated plasma CORT resulted in poorer quality feathers during molt. We tested the hypothesis that a direct link exists between plasma and feather CORT concentrations. We experimentally increased plasma CORT concentrations using implants and found that the corresponding rise in CORT could be detected in feathers grown during implantation. Furthermore, CORT levels in two feathers grown at the same time from the same bird were very consistent. These results provide evidence that elevated CORT is a causative factor in decreasing feather quality during molt. However, there remain technical details that suggest caution when interpreting data from CORT extracted from feathers. Different portions of a growing feather did not necessarily reflect changes in plasma CORT at the time different parts of the feather were forming, a standard pool of homogenized feathers indicated that sample mass affects measured feather CORT concentration, and different antibodies produced different measured CORT concentrations, leaving in doubt the exact steroid being assayed.

Urbanization is recognized as one of the greatest threats to biodiversity throughout the world. However, the vegetation within an urbanized landscape is diverse and includes a variety of native and exotic plant species. This variation allows for testing whether certain landscape designs outperform others in the support of native biodiversity. Residential yards represent a large component of an urban landscape and, if managed collectively for birds and other wildlife, could offset some of the negative effects of urbanization. In addition, many urbanites have their primary interaction with the natural world in their front and back yards. Therefore, ensuring positive wildlife experiences for them is essential in promoting urban biodiversity. At the Central Arizona-–Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research site we tested the efficacy of native landscaping in residential yards in attracting native birds. We also explored the links between socioeconomic factors, landscape designs, and urban gradient measurements with the urban bird communities. A redundancy analysis suggested that native desert bird species increased in abundance in neighborhoods with desert landscaping designs, neighborhoods closer to large desert tracts, and higher-income neighborhoods. Variance partitioning showed that collectively these three sets of environmental variables explained almost 50%% of the variation in the urban bird community. Results suggested racial and economic inequities in access to biodiversity, whereby predominantly Hispanic and lower-income neighborhoods had fewer native birds. We also found that residents' satisfaction with bird diversity was positively correlated with actual bird diversity. Our study provides new insights into the relative importance of socioeconomic variables and common urban ecological measurements in explaining urban bird communities. Urban planners can use this information to develop residential landscapes that support the well-being of both birds and people.