Studying Bird Populations using Distance-Based Sampling

This experiment studied bird populations found in the Danby Grassland and Woodlot located at York University on September 29, 2015. The data was collected at around 4:00pm and took approximately 25 minutes. Group members include Michael, Phenil, Amanda and myself. It was around 17 degrees Celsius with constant wind and rain. Five replicates were done in the grassland and five in the woodlot. The grassland was very wet and slippery while the woodlot was quite muddy due to the constant precipitation. The transect belt was placed in a random spot for each replication. To ensure a proper random sample, a random number generator was used, ranging from 1 to 5, representing the number of steps. Beginning at the edge of the grassland/woodlot and working our way inwards, we took however many steps the random number generator indicated. After the transect belt was extended to 10.0 meters, we walked along it for one minute. Within this time, we observed how many birds were within a 7.0 meter radius left or right of the transect. When a bird was spotted, we recorded the distance from the bird to the transect along the horizontal axis (not it's height from the ground). We also recorded its Recognizable Taxonomic Unit (RTU) based on brief morphological features and the wind speed according to the Beaufort Scale. Very few birds were spotted due to the heavy rainfall. A total of six were observed, with only three different RTU’s. This data was collected to study the amount of bird populations and the different types of birds found in the Danby Grassland and Woodlot.