Hello Everyone, It is nice to find renewed interest in the NFC-L list.
Thank you, Laura, for posting this information about the article my research team published in *Condor: Ornithological Applications*, concerning ground-level lights and NFCs. I thought I would provide a brief explanation of our research. My students and I conducted simultaneous NFC recordings at adjacent "dark sites" (no artificial lights) and "light sites" (sights with a low-level artificial light, such as a porch light or a street light). We found significantly higher numbers of NFCs above the light sites compared to the dark sites; on average, we found three times the number of NFCs about the light sites (on average, 31 NFCs per night above light sites compared to 11 NFCs per night above dark sites). We also found a greater diversity of species producing NFCs about light sites, but this difference was not significant (on average, 6.5 species or species-groups above light sites compared to 4.5 species or species-groups above dark sites). We conducted these recordings at 16 pairs of sites in southern Ontario, north of Lake Erie. The take-away message from this paper: ground-level lights influence the behaviour of birds passing overhead in migration, even low-level lights like the lights in our backyards. We don't know if this is because birds are lowering their altitude in response to lights, or changing the course of their migration to pass over the lights, or being induced to call more often over lights compared to dark sites. I plan to try to study these alternatives, going forward. I'd be happy to share my "author's copy" of our *Condor* paper to anyone who wants to read it; please email me off the list. I'd also like to point out that my website has a set of spectrograms of NFCs (LINK <http://web2.uwindsor.ca/courses/biology/dmennill/pubs/2014Condor371supp.pdf> ) from 40 different species or species-groups, based on recordings we've made in Ontario over the last few years (it is a supplement from a previous paper that we published in *Condor*, showing that the number of NFCs is a good predictor of the timing and magnitude of migration of birds through the Great Lakes). Happy NFC listening to all on this list! Dan Dan Mennill Associate Professor Chair, Biology Graduate Program Department of Biological Sciences University of Windsor Email: dmenn...@uwindsor.ca Web: www.uwindsor.ca/dmennill On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 12:48 PM, Laura C. Gooch <lgo...@alum.mit.edu> wrote: > Folks, > > In the spirit of recent discussions from Geoff, John, and Chris, I thought > list members might be interested in this from the May 2016 issue of *The > Condor*: > > Anthropogenic light is associated with increased vocal activity by > nocturnally migrating birds > *Matthew J. Watson 1, > <http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1#aff1>a > <http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1#n101>* > <http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1#cor1>, David R. > Wilson 1, <http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1#aff1>b > <http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1#n102>, and Daniel J. > Mennill 1 <http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1#aff1>* > <http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1#cor1>* > > http://aoucospubs.org/doi/abs/10.1650/CONDOR-15-136.1 > > These results certainly suggest that comparing call numbers from urban and > rural sites is problematic. It's not clear to me what impact an isolated > light might have. > > Yours, > > Laura Gooch > > P.S. If you need a hand with getting access to the full article, let me > know off of the list. > > > -- > *NFC-L List Info:* > Welcome and Basics <http://www.northeastbirding.com/NFC_WELCOME> > Rules and Information <http://www.northeastbirding.com/NFC_RULES> > Subscribe, Configuration and Leave > <http://www.northeastbirding.com/NFC-L_SubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm> > *Archives:* > The Mail Archive > <http://www.mail-archive.com/nfc-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html> > Surfbirds <http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NFC-L> > BirdingOnThe.Net <http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NFCL.html> > *Please submit your observations to eBird > <http://ebird.org/content/ebird/>!* > -- > -- NFC-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_WELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC_RULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NFC-L_SubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nfc-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NFC-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NFCL.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
