Wake+Audubon+Prairie+Ridge-+Aaditi

In this week's Wake Audubon meeting, they had a speaker, Brian O'Shea, who does bird surveys at an area called Prairie Ridge. The speaker discussed his findings and how the area's bird population has changed over the years. Many different bird species such as bobwhites and grosbeaks have declined in the Raleigh area. They also do branding, a way to confirm breeding, and helps the scientists understand the timing of migration, stopover duration, and Winter territoriality from mark-recapture data. The speaker showed a lot of pictures of cool birds he saw while doing his daily bird surveys and explained more about bird populations during different seasons.

This relates to the topic of indicator species. In APES we learned about indicator species and how birds are the best indicator species to determine the state of the environment. A change in bird species can indicate whether something good or bad is occurring in that particular area. These bird surveys done at Prairie Ridge by Brian O'Shea, document the bird species to be able to see if the species is declining or not and can help him understand how the environment is changing at Prairie Ridge.