An Assessment of Daily Activity Patterns of Birds in Lancer Park Caitlin Harris, Max Flores, Emily Humphries, and Haven Hogan Longwood Biology and Environmental Sciences Department

The Time of Day on the Daily Diversity of Birds The foraging traits of birds can effectively exploit a particular habitat (Robinson and Holmes, 1982). Such as flight habits, sight, and hearing. Our focus was on the feeding patterns of diurnal bird species populations in the fall season. Haven

Time-Place learning Selasphorus rufus hummingbirds Patch 1 Time-Place learning Selasphorus rufus hummingbirds Over time, they learned when to come to a certain patch to retrieve food (Tello-Ramos et al. 2015). Patch 2 Percentage of Visits Patch 3 Patch 4 Caitlin Time (min)

Woodpecker Activity Patterns Different feeding behavior responses to seasonal change. Reduced feeding efforts in the spring compared to the winter (Olsson et al., 2000). Max

Time Dependent Bird Activity Bird activity decreases as the morning progresses, plateaus in the mid-day, and rising again as night approaches (Robbins et. al, 1986). Time of Day (hours) Emily Figure 3- Comparison of cardinal activity with sparrow activity through the day

Foraging Activity Birds foraging patterns in early morning compared to late afternoon More new individual discoveries were made in the morning rather than late afternoon (Farine and Lang 2013) 8 10 12 14 16 Time of day Haven Set up feeders randomly in forest Took data on amount of new discoveries to the feeders by birds

Specific Aim Our two main questions were… Is there a significant difference between the diversity of bird species and the time of day at Lancer Park? Is there a significant difference between the diversity of bird species and the climate at Lancer Park? Caitlin

Study Area EEC (Environmental Education Center) Multiple bird feeders (examples below) Haven

Variables Predictor variables Time of day (7am, 12pm, 5pm) Other Predictors: Temperature, Pressure, Wind Speed, Humidity, Precipitation Response variables The number of birds (abundance) The number of bird species (diversity) Constants Same location Same bird feed Emily

Methods Collecting Samples: Point Count approach 7am, Noon, and 5pm 5 minute acclimation 15 minute duration of recording 10 days in total Max

Methods Data collected: Temperature (℃) Wind Speed (mph) Humidity (%) Precipitation (in) Pressure (inHg) Identification: Merlin Bird ID App Statistical Analysis: One-way ANOVA Tukey HSD Linear Regression Max

The Species that were encountered Max

Bird Species Encounters Eastern Towhee Mourning Dove Northern Cardinal Max Blue Jay Carolina Chickadee

The Average Number of Species at 7am, 12pm, and 5pm Haven

The Average Number of Individuals at 7am, 12pm, and 5pm Haven

The Average Simpson’s Index of Dominance (D=∑p2i) Emliy

The Average Shannon-Wiener index of Species Diversity (H’=-∑Pi*lnPi) Emily

The Total Number of Species Over the Study Period (10 Days) Emily

Linear Regression of Wind Speed (mph) on the Total Number of Species P-value : 0.04612 F-value : 4.37 Max

Linear Regression of Temperature (℃) on the Total Number of Individuals P-value : 0.008696 F-value : 8.004 Caitlin

Linear Regression of Temperature (℃) on the Total Number of Species P-value : 0.001861 F-value : 11.9 Cailtin

Linear Regression of Pressure (inHg) on the Total Number of Individuals P-value : 0.04113 F-value : 4.6 Emliy

Linear Regression of Pressure (inHg) on the Total Number of Species P-value : 0.03581 F-value : 4.882 Emily

Major Findings There is a significant difference between the time of day and the diversity of birds. There is a significant difference between certain climate aspects and the diversity of birds. Emliy

Discussion Data suggests that seasonal migration may influence bird species diversity Potential errors Future studies should aim to collectively gather data from other regions over a longer time span EMILY

Acknowledgements Our project was made possible by the following: Longwood University Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences Dr. Sujan “Henk” Henkanaththegedara Longwood University Environmental Education Center (EEC) Birdwatchers Inc. Caitlin

Literature Cited: Farine, D. R., & Lang, S. D. 2013. The early bird gets the worm: foraging strategies of wild songbirds lead to the early discovery of food sources. Biology Letters, 9(6), 1-4. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2013.0578 Olsson, O., Wiktander, U., & Nilsson, S. 2000. Daily Foraging Routines and Feeding Effort of a Small Bird Feeding on a Predictable Resource. Proceedings: Biological Sciences 267(1451): 1457-1461. Robbins, C. 1986. Effect of time of day on bird activity. United States Geological Survey, 275- 286. https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/5210259. Robinson, S.K., and Holmes, R.T. 1982. Foraging Behavior of Forest Birds: The Relationships Among Search Tactics, Diet, and Habitat Structure. Ecology, 63(6), 1918-1931. Tello-Ramos, M. C., Hurly, T. A., Higgott, C., and Healy, S. D. 2015. Time-place learning in wild, free-living hummingbirds. Elsevier 104:123-129. http://dx.doi.org/10/1016/j.anbehav.2015.03.015 Thayer, P. Common feeder birds. WildBirds, Naples, FL. Available from http://www.wildbirds.com/Identify-Birds/Common-Feeder-Birds(accessed Sept 2017).