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- Info
Factors influencing the distribution and abundance of burrowing owls in Cape Coral, Florida
| Author: |
Wesemann, Ted; Rowe, Mathew |
| Date: |
1987 |
| Periodical: |
In: Adams, L.W.; Leedy, D.L., eds. Integrating Man and Nature in the Metropolitan Environment: Proceedings of the National Symposium on Urban Wildlife; 1986 November 4-7; Chevy Chase, MD. Columbia, MD: National Institute for Urban Wildlife |
| Abstract: |
Birds have often been used to assess the impact of human activity on the environment (e.g., Carson 1962). The dangers of pesticide misuse discussed in Carson's essay were, at least in part, identified by the decline of many songbird populations in the United States. Moreover birds, because of their size and mobility, provide an excellent tool for assessing environmental changes that might occur over relatively short intervals of time or distance (but see Morrison 1986). Perhaps this is why habitat selection has been studied in more detail in birds than in any other group of animals (Krebs 1978, Cody 1985). Most of these studies, however, have focused on birds in "natural" environments (see Cody 1985, and other references therein). Habitat selection by birds in urban or other human-modified habitats has received much less attention (but see Emlen 1974; Gehlbach 1986a, b; and the papers by Roth, and Johnsen and VanDruff in this volume), even though it is in just such habitats where birds might provide a very useful measure of environmental quality or at least environmental change. The burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia) provides an excellent opportunity to study habitat selection in an urban bird. |
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