New paper out on surveying birds in patchy habitat using acoustic recording units

I’m happy to announce the release of a new paper out now in the journal Bioacoustics, titled “Distance truncation via sound level for bioacoustic surveys in patchy habitat”. The paper can be downloaded and viewed here. This paper was a collaborative effort between myself and others in the Bayne Lab/Bioacoustic Unit.

A well-recognized (and obvious) characteristic of bird sounds is that they can transmit over relatively long distances – in some cases over a hundred meters. This poses a problem during bird surveys, since a survey conducted in one habitat type (e.g. upland forest) might detect birds that are located in another habitat type (e.g. wetland). This can introduce error into statistical analysis, and can impede understanding of species-habitat associations.

New paper out now on year-round movements of Cassin’s Vireos

I am pleased to announce that I have a new paper in the Journal of Field Ornithology that describes the year-round migratory movements of Cassin’s Vireos. The study can be viewed and downloaded here. This paper was a side project initiated during my PhD, motivated by a simple question: where do Cassin’s Vireos go in the latter half of summer?

New paper on Lark Sparrow song

We made the cover!

A new paper that I was involved with was just published in the journal Western Birds, titled “The structure of Lark Sparrow song in California”.  The paper was a collaborative effort with Ed Pandolfino. This was a rather out-of-the-blue collaboration – Ed and I had emailed back and forth about Plumbeous/Cassin’s Vireo song a few times. Then, as he started examining Lark Sparrow song, he figured my analytical skill set would be useful as he started writing a paper on that species. I happily obliged, things went smoothly thereafter, and now the paper’s out! Click here to have a look at the paper or read on for a brief summary.

Parental leave, January-March 2019

My daughter learning to use a bioacoustic recorder. Never too early to start!

As of April 1, I’m back at work after three months off. Canada allows 1 year of paid parental leave, divided flexibly between the two parents as long as your employment qualifies. I decided to take the last three months, while my wife took the first nine.

Those three months have come to an end. I had a great time with my daughter, with highlights including a trip to the west coast and a trip to visit a friend in Florida! I also got to experience the life of a stay-at-home parent. Never again will I say “parental leave is a great time for [writing grants, writing papers, doing science]”.

Now, back to work.

Presentation at the Acoustical Society of America, Victoria, BC, November 2018

I was happy to be invited by Tiago Marques to present at the Acoustical Society of America conference in November. This was my first “acoustics” conference, so it was nice to finally branch out from birds and behaviour, and see talks about acoustics more generally.

Full disclosure, though, I still talked about birds. My talk was entitled “Sound localization for estimating population densities of birds: progress, challenges and opportunities”. In short, I highlighted that sound localization has seldom, if at all, been used to estimate the population density of birds. It is well-suited to this task, however, because sound recorders allow researchers to simultaneously and completely sample an area of arbitrary size for all singing birds. This removes/minimizes many of the nuisance variables associated with population density estimation (e.g. time-of-day, time-of-season, bird movement). It also allows much more precise estimation of habitat use at fine spatial scales, compared to rather coarse-scale sampling methods in current use.

The main problem is cost: hardware expenses alone might cost $100,000 to cover an area the size of three football fields. Covering smaller areas is cheaper and useful for many research questions, but if the goal is density estimation, “edge-effects” lead to many of the same problems as other survey methods. Hopefully, as sound localization sees broader adoption, these costs come down.

Many thanks to my aunt and uncle, Susan and Ross Holloway, for putting me up in their house for the week! I hope to attend another ASA meeting soon!

Presentation(s) at the International Ornithological Congress in Vancouver, BC.

Touching down in the Vancouver airport for the International Ornithological Congress.

I was thrilled to be able to attend and present at the International Ornithological Congress in Vancouver, BC at the end of August. This is a conference that had been circled on my calendar ever since it was first announced a few years ago. It had two key ingredients: first, it was one of the largest ornithological conferences to ever be held, and second, it was in my hometown. Birds and home-cooked meals – what’s not to like?

I delivered not one, but two oral presentations at the conference.

Alberta Chapter of the Wildlife Society Conference in Lethbridge, Alberta

A diagram from my poster illustrating the concept of sound localization. The black dots are microphones; the blue bird is the sound source; the relative delay of a sound arriving at the four microphones can be used to estimate the bird’s location with about 1m of accuracy.

This past weekend, I attended the Alberta Chapter of the Wildlife Society Conference in Lethbridge, Alberta. This was my first time attending a conference focused on something other than birds, and I had a fantastic time. I met lots of interesting people – many from Alberta, some from outside the province. I gave a poster presentation entitled “Localization of bird songs to assess responses to oil well sites”.

A bit of winter field work!

The sun sets and the moon rises after a long day of field work near Fort McMurray

I recently returned from two trips to Northeastern Alberta to conduct some winter field work. The project is the Master’s project of Bayne lab member Jeremiah Kennedy. The goal is to survey for owls in Alberta’s boreal forest, understand their habitat preferences, and investigate whether small owls avoid or alter their behaviours in response to large owls. Species of interest include Boreal Owls, Great Horned Owls, and Barred Owls, to name a few.

Because owls breed in March and April, we had to put the recording units out in February to ensure we didn’t miss their peak vocal activity – hence the snowmobiles. I spent most of my days snowshoeing to far-off locations in thigh-deep snow: hard work – and my hip flexors gave me some grief – but it was a great experience!

Funding approved for 2-year Post Doc position at the University of Alberta

I am thrilled to announce that I will be spending the next two years working in Erin Bayne’s lab at the University of Alberta!

Yesterday, I got the news that my proposal for a Mitacs Accelerate grant was approved. The proposal has two primary aims: 1) to improve sound localization technology (see my previous post on the topic here); and 2) to use this technology to assess the impacts of human alterations to habitat (e.g. energy industry activity) on bird behavior and ecology. Looking forward to getting started!

2017 Field Season Wrap-up

The 2017 field season is in the books. I had a very busy season, both personally and professionally: I spent several weeks in the field, moved from Calfornia to Canada, and got married. I’ll recount some of the highlights below.