Distance based sampling of birds in grassland and woodlot habitats

The dataset was collected on Monday September 28th, 2015 at Danby Woods and Grassland at York University in Toronto, Ontario between 3:00pm- 4:30pm. The weather conditions of the location was about 20 °C cloudy with a slight wind gust. Although it was not raining during the experiment, the grassland and woodlot area was a little damp because it rained prior to the experiment. The experiment was done in groups of 4 which included Aziza, Sahar, Paula and Shahana. However, this experiment was conducted with the help of Sahar. The purpose of this experiment was to observe bird distribution and abundance in woodlots vs grassland areas, and to learn techniques of collecting distance based dataset using a transect. This experiment consisted of recording the frequency of birds, species/family, the wind speeds and the distance between the birds and the transect. The experiment was replicated 5 times in woodlot and 5 times in grassland. Each transect was observed for 3 minutes to take the mobility of the bird into account. A 15m transect was placed randomly on the ground to record the distance between the birds and the transect. The distance ranged from 0-15m, and was approximated along both sides of the horizontal axis of the transect. Also, for this dataset height was not taken into consideration. When a bird was spotted one member of the group would record the estimated distance and the frequency of the birds. The other individual would try to identify the bird using a bird identification key that was given. The wind speed was decided by using the Beaufort scale that ranged from 0(calm) to 12(hurricane), and a number was assigned by the way the wind affected surrounding things like plants and trees. There was not a huge abundance of bird species most of the ones that were spotted were Herring Gulls, Northern Mockingbird, Sparrow and Black Phoebe. Rain could have been a factor that limited the abundance of birds in the woodlot and grassland areas.