Applied Ecology and Management Around Waterfowl Management in Nebraska

Ornithologists have been banding birds for over a century, but these data have been used less often than they could be to answer questions about population dynamics. In this seminar, I attempt to bridge the gap between data-rich species like mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), with over 1.2 million band recoveries, to data-poor species like wood warblers (Parulidae), with just over 6,000 recoveries from 53 combined species. The most common application of band-recovery data is estimation of annual survival. By using species as random effects, I show how we can also estimate juvenile and adult survival for data-poor assemblages such as wood warblers. Moving on to fecundity, I demonstrate how we can estimate fecundity at annual and regional scales using age ratios of birds captured for banding, and I apply these estimators to prairie dabbling ducks (Anatidae) and dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis). Finally, I demonstrate how banding data can be combined with harvest data to estimate population size using Lincoln estimators, and apply the method to data-rich and data-poor examples.