{"id":289,"date":"2017-10-10T22:46:14","date_gmt":"2017-10-10T22:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/tropicalecologycr17\/?p=289"},"modified":"2017-10-10T23:46:37","modified_gmt":"2017-10-10T23:46:37","slug":"without-feather-ado-a-bird-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/tropicalecologycr17\/without-feather-ado-a-bird-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Without Feather Ado: A Bird Update!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ramphastos ambiguus, or a yellow-throated toucan, photographed at La Selva by Jenna Lea<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now that we\u2019ve reached roughly the two-thirds mark of our time in Costa Rica, I think it\u2019s a good time to reflect back on the\u00a0huge diversity of bird species\u00a0we\u2019ve seen during our time here. During the first half of the semester, Dr. Schmidt led birding walks most mornings. During these walks, the morning\u2019s bird list was tracked through\u00a0eBird, a phone app developed by Cornell as a way to gather distribution data from recreational birders (for more information, visit\u00a0http:\/\/ebird.org\/content\/ebird\/about\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Combining these bird walk lists with incidental observations students made throughout the day, our group has seen a total of 143 species spread across 39 families\u00a0\u00a0(as\u00a0well as one bird, the dusky-faced tanager, whose family is currently under debate). While 13 of these families are represented only be a single species, the majority have at least three to four species to their name. The most populous groups include:\u00a0Trochilidae, or hummingbirds with 12 species spotted so far;\u00a0Thraupidae, or tanagers with 15 species; and\u00a0Tyrannidae, or flycatchers, with the group having spotted a whopping\u00a020 species so far!<\/p>\n

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A female Aulacorhynchus prasinus, or Northern-Emerald Toucanet, captured by a mist net at the UGA Campus. On its tail feathers the GPS tag is visible. Photographed by Grant Foster<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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A male Passerini’s Tanager, Ramphocelus passerinii, photographed at Las Selva by Maddie Tank<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In addition to observation through binoculars, some of us were able to get up close and personal with birds caught during mist net surveys performed by local researchers. We got to watch the researchers remove the birds from the net, take morphometric data, and even attach radio transmitter tags to larger birds. Overall the trip\u2019s been chocked full with great bird observations and experiences. While we have already seen a huge diversity of birds, Costa Rica\u2019s total 918 species means there\u2019s always more to find!<\/p>\n

Grant Foster<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that we\u2019ve reached roughly the two-thirds mark of our time in Costa Rica, I think it\u2019s a good time to reflect back on the\u00a0huge diversity of bird species\u00a0we\u2019ve seen during our time here. During the first half of the semester, Dr. Schmidt led birding walks most mornings. During these walks, the morning\u2019s bird list … Continue reading Without Feather Ado: A Bird Update!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2617,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/tropicalecologycr17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/tropicalecologycr17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/tropicalecologycr17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/tropicalecologycr17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2617"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/tropicalecologycr17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/tropicalecologycr17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/tropicalecologycr17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/tropicalecologycr17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ctlsites.uga.edu\/tropicalecologycr17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}