Posters 2023 – MOS Convention

We invited researchers from Maryland universities, colleges and organizations to present posters on various aspects of bird behavior. Each researcher will be available for any questions from 4:00 to 6:00 pm on Saturday.

Here are the posters that will be presented during the 2023 Convention:

Marshes for Tomorrow – A Landscape-scale Restoration Plan for Maryland’s Tidal Salt Marshes

Henrietta Bellman and David R. Curson, Audubon Mid-Atlantic

Maryland’s salt marshes are home to a unique assemblage of birds, some of which, like the Saltmarsh Sparrow, have evolved in this ecosystem and are entirely dependent on it. Climate-driven sea level rise threatens to inundate the vast majority of our salt marshes during this century, and could even threaten some salt marsh birds with extinction. Audubon is leading a broad partnership to create a spatially-explicit plan which targets the most suitable tidal marshes to maintain long-term for birds through restoration.

2022 Morning Flight Count at Turkey Point: Maryland Biodiversity Project continues long term monitoring of fall bird migration along the Chesapeake Bay

Jonathan Irons and Jim Brighton, Maryland Biodiversity Project

The fall of 2022 marked the second season of Maryland Biodiversity Project’s morning flight count at Turkey Point in Cecil County. This multi-year survey conducted from August 1st to November 30th aims to monitor avian populations and assess species diversity on Maryland’s inland coastal plain.

Natural Lands Project – Balancing Natural Lands on Working Farms for Wildlife and Cleaner Water

Daniel M. Small, Center for Environment & Society, Washington College

Started in 2015, the Natural Lands Project works with landowners, both private and public on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, who want to create a balance on their agricultural properties between wildlife habitat and farming. Our focus is on creating early successional habitat to support grassland and shrubland bird communities, most notably Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus), as well as wetland restoration for waterfowl. Interest has been high, we have created over 1200 acres of early successional habitat, 200 acres of afforestation, and 100 acres of wetlands. Wildlife are responding, bobwhite are finding the new habitat and in some cases landowners are hearing birds for the first time in decades.

Variation in song structure at multiple levels in the grasshopper sparrow

Rebecca Hill and Bernard Lohr, University of Maryland Baltimore County

Grasshopper sparrow males sing two song types, a territorial broadcast song early in the breeding cycle (the “buzz” song, familiar to many birders), and a secondary song produced only by paired males, and sung predominantly later in a breeding cycle. Their warble song has more variation in acoustic structure both within and across populations than the buzz song. We measured several acoustic characteristics of the warble song and found considerable overlap in the acoustic space between syllable types of different populations and subspecies, suggesting a lack of local dialect structure in this species.

Staying in the Neighborhood – Intrinsic and extrinsic factors predict local recruitment in a resident population of eastern bluebirds

Sarah Hill MS and Lynn Siefferman PhD, Appalachian State University

Animals breeding within their natal populations (local recruitment) can have important impacts on competition and gene flow, and are often influenced by ecological and individual factors. I assessed the intrinsic and extrinsic determinants of local recruitment from a 3-year study of the breeding ecology of Eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis) in the mountains of North Carolina. Overall, dispersal and recruitment in Eastern bluebirds is influenced jointly by intrinsic (body condition) and extrinsic (habitat characteristics) factors suggesting that individual quality, predation, and competition likely shape natal philopatry in resident passerines.