Bird Ecology and Conservation A Handbook of Techniques

is coded “1,” it becomes “3” between fledging and the year’s end, and turns “5” on 1 January. A bird of completely unknown age i ...

cranes and some others can be sexed by eversion of the cloaca since the male has a distinct phallus (Baker 1993, p29). Breeding ...

4.7 Size 4.7.1 Body size There are many reasons in ecological and evolutionary research for measuring the size of individual bir ...

bird) at the wing tip to the nearest 0.5 or 1 mm. The pressures required should be adequate to flatten the wing onto the rule an ...

off ( Jenni and Winkler 1989). This has advantages when skins and live-bird measurements must be compared, it may be easier to u ...

Size| 107 (a) (b) Fig. 4.5Measuring “maximum” tarsus using the OD calliper of a Vernier. This measurement is typically taken to ...

4.7.5 Tarsus-and-toe In some non-passerine groups (e.g. waders, rails) a useful additional size measure is the tarsus-and-toe, t ...

Size| 109 (a) (b) Fig. 4.6Measuring bill-length (a) and depth (b) of a Great Tit. The bill-length is taken with the “ID” callipe ...

some species. Bill-width is more rarely used than the above metrics because of the difficulty in defining where, along a taperin ...

(Møller 1998; Shykoff and Møller 1999). However, observers are themselves asymmetrical, and typically one side will be preferred ...

112 |Birds in the hand Fig. 4.7In many species, such as passerines at middle and higher latitudes, the level of fat reserves can ...

McCabe’s system is inadequate for recording the high fat loads of long-distance migrants. Kaiser’s (1993) system based on both t ...

assessment of wing and body molts. The simplest scheme is to record the state of progress of molt through the primaries by scori ...

give a poor indication of gut parasite load. Blood parasite assessment requires blood biopsy (see below and Chapter 10). 4.9 Bio ...

colony, diet and trophic status inferred from stable isotope signatures. Mar. Ecol.—Prog. Series, 195, 261–268. Beintema, A.J. ( ...

Gosler, A.G. (2002). Strategy and constraint in the winter fattening of the great tit Parus major. J. Anim. Ecol., 71, 771–779. ...

Murphy, M.E., Miller, B.T., and King, J.R. (1989). A structural comparison of fault bars with feather defects known to be nutrit ...

5. Estimating survival and movement James D. Nichols, William L. Kendall, and Michael C. Runge 5.1 Introduction Goals of bird co ...

for similar sampling situations. Inferences about movements can also be based on counts of birds. For example, Johnson and Grier ...

(e.g. once each week), listening for radio signals and identifying birds as alive or dead. Such status identification sometimes ...