Camera-trapping at artificial bathing sites provides a snapshot of a forest bird community

Autor: Shin-Ichi Seki
Rok vydání: 2010
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of Forest Research. 15:307-315
ISSN: 1610-7403
1341-6979
DOI: 10.1007/s10310-010-0186-9
Popis: This study examined the potential of artificial bathing sites as a baiting method for avian camera-trapping. The local bird community on a small island in southwestern Japan was studied in the spring using three different methods (camera-trapping at bathing sites, mist-netting, and point counts) and the resulting species composition estimates were compared. The island is located on a major flyway in East Asia and the forest-understory passing migrants are ideal subjects for examining the efficiency of camera-trapping at detecting inconspicuous or rarely vocal species as a complement to traditional bird census methods. The success of camera-trapping at artificial bathing sites, averaging 10.59 visits/camera-day, was considerably higher than that of previous studies that used no baiting device. Further, the 23 species recorded were from various forest height layers and included species of various size classes. The similarity in the species compositions recorded by camera-trapping and mist-netting surveys was statistically significant, but the results of point-count surveys differed from the other two methods. The similarity of the results using the first two methods may have been due to the presence of understory passage visitors and the absence of canopy dwellers in the non-observation-based methods. The results suggest that camera-trapping with an artificial bathing site is potentially an easier and non-invasive alternative to mist-netting and can be used to complement observation-based census techniques.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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