We’ve just concluded a busy catching period, coinciding with
the roller chicks being at least one week old. At this stage they are less
prone to disturbance and are more regularly visited at the nest by their
parents. Alessandro and I were again joined by Chris from the BTO, and also by
my primary PhD supervisor Dr Aldina Franco from UEA, as we used various
techniques to try and trap the adult birds. Mist nets strung across the nest
entrance again proved the most effective method, although we also tried landing
nets, playback with dummies, and clap traps (all with limited success). We did
end up deploying the novel GPS loggers on 10 rollers though, and also managed
to retrieve a geolocator from one of last year’s birds; which is great!
 |
| A roller in the process of being fitted with a GPS logger. The hood keeps the bird calm during the handling process. |
Aside from the ongoing nest monitoring and the collecting of
breeding parameters from each of the roller pairs within the study area, we’ve been
continuing with the population survey road transects and also carrying out
walked invertebrate transects. The latter should provide us with data on prey
abundance and diversity within the different habitat types that the rollers use
throughout the breeding season, and hopefully allow us to investigate any
relationship between surrounding habitat type and nest site productivity.
No comments:
Post a Comment