Native Landscaping in Urban Areas Can Help Native Birds

ScienceDaily (Aug. 22, 2012) — A recent study of residential landscape types and native bird communities in Phoenix, Ariz., led by a University of Massachusetts Amherst urban ecologist suggests that yards mimicking native vegetation and wildlands offer birds "mini refuges," helping to offset the loss of biodiversity in cities and supporting birds better than traditional grass lawns and non-native plantings.

The study, led by Susannah Lerman with her advisor Paige Warren at UMass Amherst, and Hilary Gan and Eyal Shochat at Arizona State University, is one of the first to use quantitative measures and a systematic approach, with 24-hour video monitoring, to assess and compare foraging behavior of common backyard birds in yards in Phoenix, at the northern edge of the Sonoran Desert. It appears in the current issue of PLOS ONE.

It is also one of the first to conduct experiments to compare different types of a single urban landscape form (residential yards), Lerman says. Overall, the study found that desert-like, "xeric" yards had a more even bird community and superior habitat compared to moist, or "mesic," grass lawns in the Phoenix area.

Continued: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120822184134.htm

An Introduced Bird Competitor Tips the Balance Against Hawaiian Species

ScienceDaily (May 23, 2012) — Biologists Leonard Freed and Rebecca Cann from the University of Hawaii at Manoa have been studying birds at Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge for 20 years. Located on an old cattle ranch on the windward slope of Mauna Kea on the Island of Hawaii, it was established in 1985 to protect 8 species of rare and endangered perching birds. The refuge and its volunteers planted over 400,000 seedlings of native koa trees in an abandoned pasture to restore high elevation forest.

The once-rare white-eye colonized the restoration area, grew rapidly in it, but then surged into the old-growth forest below. Freed and Cann estimated that tens of thousands of native birds were lost.

Their study was recently published in the open access journal NeoBiota.

The researchers had previously shown competition between white-eyes and native birds on their study sites. With increased numbers of white-eyes, young of all native species measured had stunted growth, indicating that food was becoming a problem. They also documented that birds of all ages had difficulty replacing their feathers. Each problem, both unprecedented in nature, occurred at the same time. In contrast to the forest adjacent to the restoration area, native birds deeper within the forest had normal growth and feather replacement where white-eyes were still rare.

Read more:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120523135529.htm