Biscayne National Park colonial nesting birds monitoring protocol—Version 1.1

Breeding colonies of wading birds (orders Ciconiiformes, Pelecaniformes) and seabirds (orders Suliformes, Pelecaniformes) serve as important indicators of aquatic ecosystem health, as they respond to changes in food abundance and quality, contaminants, invasive species, and disturbance. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, Restoration Coordination & Verification program (CERP-RECOVER) has identified wading-bird colonies as an important ecosystem restoration indicator. The National Park Service South Florida/Caribbean Inventory & Monitoring Network (SFCN) ranked colonial nesting birds eighth out of 44 vital signs of park natural resource conditions for ecological significance and feasibility. However, while large-scale monitoring efforts are occurring in the rest of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem, only minimal historic data collection and no extensive ongoing monitoring of wading bird and seabird nesting have occurred in Biscayne National Park. Consequently, due to their high importance as biological indicators and because they are a gap occurring in regional monitoring efforts, the network has initiated a monitoring program of colonial nesting birds in Biscayne National Park. This protocol provides the rationale, approach, and detailed Standard Operating Procedures for annual colonial bird monitoring within and close to Biscayne National Park and conforms to the Oakley et al. (2003) guidelines for National Park Service long-term monitoring protocols. The specific objectives of this monitoring program are to determine status and long-term trends in: Numbers and locations of active colonies of colonial nesting birds with a special focus on Double-crested Cormorants, Great Egrets, Great White Herons, Great Blue Herons, White Ibises, and Roseate Spoonbills. Annual peak active nest counts of colonial nesting birds in Biscayne National Park with a special focus on the species mentioned above. An annual nesting index (i.e., sum of monthly nest counts) with a special focus on the species mentioned above. Timing of peak nest counts for the focal species.

Hierarchical Functional Response of a Forager on a Wetland Landscape

We show that for some foragers the form that a functional response takes depends on the temporal and spatial scales considered. In representing the consumption rate of an organism, it may be necessary to use a hierarchy of functional responses. Consider, for example, a wading bird foraging in wetland landscape characterized by a spatial distribution of potential foraging sites, such as ponds. At the smallest time scale of minutes or hours, during which a wading bird is foraging within a single site, the functional response will reflect the local density of prey, as well as features of the site that affect the feeding rate, such as water depth. At this short time scale, which is determined by the giving up time of the wading bird in a particular site, prey density may be relatively constant. The food intake from a particular pond is then the product of the time spent before giving-up time and moving to another site and the rate of prey consumption at that site. A prey-centered functional response is most appropriate for describing the prey consumption rate. We propose that over the longer time scale of a day, during which a wading bird may visit several foraging sites, the type of functional response can be considered to be patch centered. That is, it is influenced by the spatial configuration of sites with available prey and the wading bird’s strategy of choosing among different sites and decisions on how long to stay in any given sites. Over the time scale of a day, if the prey densities stay relatively constant, the patch-centered functional response for a constant environment is adequate. However, on the longer time scale of a breeding season, in which changing water levels result in temporal changes in the availability of prey in sites, a third hierarchical level may be relevant. At that scale, the way in which the landscape pattern changes through time, and how the wading bird responds, influences the functional response. This hierarchical concept applies to a colony of breeding wading birds foraging in wetlands such as the Everglades.

DIVERSITY AND RESIDENTIAL STATUS OF WADER BIRDS AT HODAL IN PALWAL DISTRICT, IN HARYANA, INDIA.

Waders belonging to order Charadriiformes are commonly found along shorelines and mudats that wade in order to forage for food (such as insects or crustaceans) in the mud or sand. Bogs, marshes, mudats, shorelines, ponds, and ooded areas are all popular habitats for wading birds. The waders include storks, spoonbills, cranes, herons, egrets and ibises. They have certain physical and behavioural adaptations for living on or near water. Wading birds depend on water as a source of food, shelter, and nesting sites. Wading birds wade into shallow water to obtain food, instead of swimming and diving in water in search of feed that is not found on land. If we study the morphology of wading birds, they have lots of characteristics and adaptations that are useful in a watery habitat. Long legs of the wading birds help them to keep their feathers high and dry when wading into water in search of food. A long neck and a long bill are adaptations that make it possible to strike at prey while walking around on long legs. The benets of wading bird′s long, thin, spread-out toes are three-fold: toes help them to keep their balance and also help them to walk in mud without sinking. While walking in water and mushy mud, thin toes are easier to lift and set down. Spread-out toes also prevent them from sinking into soft mud in the water and at the water's edge, and above all those toes also disperse the weight of these big, tall birds, helping them keep their balance over their long legs. Waders are ecologically dependent on wetlands, as they provide good habitat to them for feeding, roosting, breeding, nesting, pre-migratory requirements, migration and protection from predators. So, wet lands plays an important part in the life cycle of wading birds. Wetlands have got highest capacity and are often extremely rich in bird and animal life. The present study aims at the assessment of diversity and residential status of wading birds in Yamuna basin near Hodal in Palwal District. It is located at 27°53′39″N and 77°22′09″E having an average elevation of 190 meters. Many ornithologists pay lots of their attention on eld study of birds during the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century and till today many more are involved in the study of avian diversity near rivers. Avian fauna of Kalesar forests in immediate vicinity of River Yamuna in Yamuna-nagar District has been analysed by Kalsi (1998). Kulkarni et al.(2011) reported 151 species of birds from river Godavari; Balapureet al. (2012) reported 63 avian species from river Narmada. Other workers like Bahuguna(2008), Taketal.(2010), Gupta & Kaushik (2011), Gupta et.al(2012), Anupma et al (2014), Ankita et al (2019) have studied wetlands birds in various regions along the banks of rivers.

Joint species distribution models of Everglades wading birds to inform restoration planning

Restoration of the Florida Everglades, a substantial wetland ecosystem within the United States, is one of the largest ongoing restoration projects in the world. Decision-makers and managers within the Everglades ecosystem rely on ecological models forecasting indicator wildlife response to changes in the management of water flows within the system. One such indicator of ecosystem health, the presence of wading bird communities on the landscape, is currently assessed using three species distribution models that assume perfect detection and report output on different scales that are challenging to compare against one another. We sought to use current advancements in species distribution modeling to improve models of Everglades wading bird distribution. Using a joint species distribution model that accounted for imperfect detection, we modeled the presence of nine species of wading bird simultaneously in response to annual hydrologic conditions and landscape characteristics within the Everglades system. Our resulting model improved upon the previous model in three key ways: 1) the model predicts probability of occupancy for the nine species on a scale of 0–1, making the output more intuitive and easily comparable for managers and decision-makers that must consider the responses of several species simultaneously; 2) through joint species modeling, we were able to consider rarer species within the modeling that otherwise are detected in too few numbers to fit as individual models; and 3) the model explicitly allows detection probability of species to be less than 1 which can reduce bias in the site occupancy estimates. These improvements are essential as Everglades restoration continues and managers require models that consider the impacts of water management on key indicator wildlife such as the wading bird community.

Urban specialization reduces habitat connectivity by a highly mobile wading bird

Background Mobile animals transport nutrients and propagules across habitats, and are crucial for the functioning of food webs and for ecosystem services. Human activities such as urbanization can alter animal movement behavior, including site fidelity and resource use. Because many urban areas are adjacent to natural sites, mobile animals might connect natural and urban habitats. More generally, understanding animal movement patterns in urban areas can help predict how urban expansion will affect the roles of highly mobile animals in ecological processes. Methods Here, we examined movements by a seasonally nomadic wading bird, the American white ibis (Eudocimus albus), in South Florida, USA. White ibis are colonial wading birds that forage on aquatic prey; in recent years, some ibis have shifted their behavior to forage in urban parks, where they are fed by people. We used a spatial network approach to investigate how individual movement patterns influence connectivity between urban and non-urban sites. We built a network of habitat connectivity using GPS tracking data from ibis during their non-breeding season and compared this network to simulated networks that assumed individuals moved indiscriminately with respect to habitat type. Results We found that the observed network was less connected than the simulated networks, that urban-urban and natural-natural connections were strong, and that individuals using urban sites had the least-variable habitat use. Importantly, the few ibis that used both urban and natural habitats contributed the most to connectivity. Conclusions Habitat specialization in urban-acclimated wildlife could reduce the exchange of propagules and nutrients between urban and natural areas, which has consequences both for beneficial effects of connectivity such as gene flow and for detrimental effects such as the spread of contaminants or pathogens.