Meeting: Aerial Insectivore Conservation and Monitoring in the Upper Midwest

Participants: Katie Koch, Pam Hunt, Kelly Applegate, Penny Briscoe

Date: 4 November 2014

Action Items
Responsible person: / Task:
Katie Koch and Pam Hunt / Help Dick Wolinski finalize and send out notes from the August workshop.
All / Participate in next call on January 6, 2015 – until then, keep up the great work!

1)Review and track completeness of last call’s action items – Katie Koch

  1. Katie and Pam to work with Dick on meeting notes!
  2. Kelly Applegate hasn’t had any luck connecting with entomologists yet. Pam didn’t find Kevin at the AOU, but he wasn’t there.
  3. Bill has also tried to reach out in the Midwest, with no success.
  4. Katie asked what else we could do to try and reach out to entomologists.
  5. It doesn’t seem like there are many long-term datasets. We would be more limited to recent inference.

2)Briefing from AI session at 2014 AOU/COS Conference – Pam Hunt

  1. AOU/COS meeting had a full-day symposium on AI biology and conservation (largely Canadian focused).
  2. Pam made a document with titles, abstracts and notes from doc and will send this out.
  3. A lot of people are looking at the agricultural intensification component of AI decline.
  4. Linking neonicotinoids to bird population declines. Direct and indirect effects on survival and reproductive success.
  5. How to link or campaign these species within Midwest Grassland Network?
  6. Correlating BBS population trends with other factors.
  7. Mixed results from these models.
  8. Longer-distance migrants declining more strongly.
  9. In many cases, drought in the wintering grounds is correlated with declines.
  10. Extreme weather events (late spring cold snaps impact Tree Swallows that are moving earlier in the year).
  11. Pesticide application in Latin America
  12. Categorized countries based on import. Species in high pesticide import countries are declining more than species in low import countries.
  13. We don’t know which are the most limiting factors or biggest drivers of decline.
  14. Katie suggested we connect with Midwest Grassland Network and get swallows on their radar (they forage over agricultural landscapes).
  15. Prairies to Pampas – get AI added to that effort.
  16. Everyday actions people can take in their backyards to conserve Aerial Insectivores (CHSW, PUMA).
  17. We should formulate a list of questions to get answered and direct research to address them (Kelly). We could direct research through universities, granting agencies, etc. to fill in the pieces.
  18. Kelly is working with Bemidji State to investigate PUMA diet in MN using fecal samples, chemical testing, etc.
  19. Penny added that her focus is on PUMA/Swallows and increasing housing opportunities, documenting colony sites in MI, and serving as an outreach/education specialist. She supplementally feeds PUMA more than ever – birds are arriving earlier (before food is out). She also puts out food during cold, rainy weather.
  20. Kelly will send Penny some outreach materials to help her in Michigan.

3)Updates from Midwest AI partners – Round Robin

  1. New Hampshire just conducted a first year of OSFL surveys (replicating BBA methods). They covered 30 locations, and their initial findings corroborate with other atlases.
  2. Birds are not being found in more southern blocks where they were present in the 1980s.
  3. We talked about how amazing it is that PUMA rely on human-provided housing, and how that can be sustained across generations. MI is one of the lower population states (housing is the limiting factor). Kelly offered suggestions about how they connect with students and landowners in MN, and the incentives they offer to overcome barriers (cost of housing, monitoring, feeding).
  4. MN is planning to continue banding PUMA in 2015, gearing up for a meeting later this month, increasing housing in 2015. There are also early discussions about deploying GPS tags on Chimney Swifts to determine overwintering locations. It would be great to figure out where these swifts are going…

4)What’s next? Goals and action items for next two months - Group Discussion

  1. We had a few more ideas come up on today’s call, but we didn’t have time for this discussion. Katie offered to tee this up for our call on Tuesday, January 6, 2015.

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