Dear PSF friends,

 As many of you know, the PSF research study will come to an end this coming Sunday and I wish to thank all the volunteers for their continued efforts and commitment. Some routes were long, some days were rainy, and some birds were hard to look at! Thank you to all the volunteers for another season of extraordinary efforts.

 It has been two weeks since I last updated you with information from the field, so I will cover the last two weeks in this update.

 This update includes:

-          Collision tally at the major bird kill zones

-          Collision tally by route

-          Collision tally by species

-          Collision Frequency this spring

As mentioned before, this spring season gave the impression of being slower than previous years with respect to overall collision numbers. Well, as the migration season unwinds, we can say that this fact still holds true. At this point, PSF volunteers have collected 82 birds (72 dead and 11 injured), a number inferior to both 2006 (110) and 2005 (166) for the same time period. Furthermore, the intensity of our daily monitoring during our spring study would have resulted in our volunteers recording a higher number of collisions; that wasn’t the case. This spring migration truly witnessed less bird collisions at our usual bird kill zones.

 Below are the initial results for this season’s study:

 

Collision tally at the major bird kill zones

While the number of collisions are lower for each site, they are still ranked in the same order as seen in previous years:

Morgan Mail                           32 Collisions

Jacob Javits Center                 18 Collisions

Met Museum                           14 Collisions

WFC Area                                 4 Collisions

 

Collision tally by route

The overall route tally, including all 78 sites is as follows:

Westside                                 36 Collisions

Met Museum                           14 Collisions

Eastside                                     4 Collisions

WFC Area                                 4 Collisions

 

Collision tally by species

The overall number of species collected by PSF Volunteers reached 30 and the top five species found this season are:

Ovenbird                                 13 Collisions

Black-and-White Warbler         9 Collisions

White-throated Sparrow           8 Collisions

American Woodcock                5 Collisions

The three following species are tied for the fifth position:

Blue Jay                                    3 Collisions

Common Yellowthroat             3 Collisions

Northern Waterthrush               3 Collisions

 

Collision Frequency this spring

Below is a graph indicating the frequency of collisions during this past season. A peak was observed on May 12^th with 12 collisions.

Sadly, two Blackburnian Warblers were found dead this spring. If you have never seen a live one (like myself), here is a great shot by Cal Vornberger.

 

Take care,

Nicole