Working for an environmental agency, I did bird surveys close to an area of direct influence of heavy machine movement, big truck movement, and in general, a lot of extra background noise for birds. Usually ornithologists (at least in Colombia) don't include bioacoustics information in such reports, but I would like to suggest something about this.
I did recordings of the ambient environmental noise, and also recorded several species living in the area. As a general comment, do you think that it would be accurate to say that birds are certainly being affected by the continuous exposure to this extra noise? I am aware of the Brumm, and Slabbekoorn et al. publications; however, I of course realize that I can't reach the conclusions they do because of differences in the sampling and overall purpose of my survey. Does anyone know studies or reports commenting on short-term effects (months or a couple of years)? Thank you so much for any suggestions or comments. Paulo C. Pulgarín-R Instituto de Biología Universidad de Antioquia AA. 1226 Medellín-Colombia Tel: +57(4)341693 Cel: 3128215436
