GEOG/ES&P 330
California Ecosystems
Urban Biogeography Self-Guided Field Trip
in lieu of Sepulveda Dam field trip
Urban Fauna: Field Observation
Student who had to miss the regular field trip in GEOG/ES&P 330 will do an "alternative, self-guided urban fauna field observation," instead, that is, watch pigeons, the ultimate urban survivors. They will follow the procedure of the late great PigeonWatch project at Cornell University's Ornithology Lab.This project was an example of the use of citizen science to generate data in support of a scientific investigation. Citizen volunteers (or, ahem, students "volunteered" by their professor) collect simple data for processing by others elsewhere. Other examples of citizen science projects are Tokyo University's International Pellet Watch program, which monitors persistent organic pollutants in "nerdles" washed up on beaches. Another citizen science project is the California State Water Resources Board Clean Water Team citizen water monitoring program, and another is the SETI @ Home screensaver program (citizens don't even need to do anything in that program other than install a screensaver, which processes astronomical imagery trying to detect signals that might indicate an intelligent civilization out there in Space, the Final Frontier). Other citizen science projects can be found at Zooniverse and Scientific American's citizen science page and through search engines.
Background: Cornell's Project PigeonWatch
Since your professor is notoriously and inordinately fond of pigeons, in this case, Columba livia, this lab will follow the PigeonWatch protocol. So, a bit about Project PigeonWatch, which Cornell ran from 1993 through 2012. The Cornell project was meant to document the diversity of feral pigeon plumage patterns worldwide. This diversity contrasts dramatically with the monotypic blue-bar patterns of their wild ancestor, the rock dove still found in portions of the Middle East, the Mediterranean borderlands, and the coastal cliffs of northwestern Europe. Rock doves (Columba livia Gmelin 1789), like many other wild species of bird, are driven toward a single morph by stabilizing selection against departures from the norm: Unusual morphs are easily tracked by a raptor among a scattering flock of birds. Feral pigeons, however, exhibit quite a range of common morphs, with variations in color and variations in patterns overlying their base colors. These variations are persistent against stabilizing selection, and Cornell wanted to know why (LaBranche 1999). Are they maintained by divergent selection, perhaps local adaptation to complex local habitats? What is the rôle of sexual selection and assortative mating in all this? Are divergent oddities in coloration favored during mate selection enough to counter stabilizing natural selection?Project PigeonWatch enlisted thousands of laypeople worldwide to collect data with a simple template and reference materials. Participants counted the size of flocks they observed and the numbers of birds belonging to each of seven common morphs. Additionally, if they observed courtship attempts and matings, they noted which morph displayed male courtship behaviors and which morph was the target in one of these encounters.
No scientific results were ever published, however. I approached the Cornell Ornithology Lab about these “dark data,” and they confirmed that the “science” in this particular “citizen science” project never made it into publication. This is, actually, a common outcome in many citizen science projects, perhaps in part due to the logistics of managing the sheer volumes of data generated.
Well, there I was, belatedly trying to submit CSULB student-collected data on 6,475 pigeons and 610 courtships in 360 different sites over 20 years, and finding the project had quietly died without publication of the data and results. That got me interested in what had happened. A lot of times "dark data" happen because people get null results that are hard to publish or squirrely results they can't interpret or there are problems in data collection and analysis. I have some sneaking suspicions: I think they may have overlooked the single biggest reason you get weird colors in feral pigeons (constant loss of pigeons by pigeon fanciers in the area -- that's happened to me -- and the subsequent survival and breeding of a small percentage of these). Anyhow, the whole PigeonWatch situation has become of scientific interest to me!
Getting Your Data
Doing a Pigeon Watch entails visiting a site frequented by pigeons somewhere in the region, whether urban commercial, industrial, suburban, rural, or park/lakeside, long enough to:- census the number of birds present
- count color morphs among them (using the seven morphs described at the Quick Reference page), and
- noting which color bird engages in courting behavior towards which other color bird(s), marking each separate target of a courting male.
To do this lab, print copies of the Pigeonwatch Habitat Form and of the PigeonWatch Tally Sheet.
Read the "Why study pigeons?" article by Melinda S. LaBranche to become familiar with the goals of the project. This article is now linked on the course home page as a "backgrounder" just above the list of lecture materials.
You can (optionally) see where your predecessors have collected data by opening Google Earth Pro and downloading the following KMZ file and opening it in Google Earth: https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/geog442/PigeonWatch/PigeonWatchMap.kmz. The spatial pattern shows a lot of data collected along the coast of Southern California and some inland in the L.A. Basin, mostly. One of the arguments in the literature about what governs the pattern of pigeon morphs is distance from the beach. I don't have enough data to explore this, sooooooo ... I'd like to send your teams inland, to various points in the San Fernando Valley and San Gabriel Valley. Your data will be part of this KMZ one day!
The idea is for each person or, better, team of two, to go to the general areas specified below and then wander around until you find a flock of pigeons. They tend to roost up on telephone poles and lines as well as billboards, and they look for food where people leave a mess (fast food places, places where people give them food). They nest under bridges and on buildings with sills and other architectural complexities. You might spend some time before going out, just noticing pigeons near where you live, shop, work, and recreate and paying attention to the kinds of environments you find them in. That sensitizes you to them and, so, they should be easier to notice once you're seriously in the field, forms in hand.
Each observer should find at least four locations to set up shop. If you go out as a team, you can enjoy a smaller number of targets: six (which averages to 3 sites per observer). Stay on site for a minimum of 15 minutes and do at least two counts at each site (this is because the birds take off and land constantly and two or three counts allows you to compensate for the chaos). You first get a count of the flock at that moment and then zero in on counting specific color morphs. If you are lucky and the birds are relaxed after eating, you may see some males start cruising. If you see the courtship behaviors, note the color morph of the courter and the morph of his target. If you see them actually copulate, note that, as it is likely a bonded couple. It really helps for you to go in teams of two: It's easier if one person is calling out counts and the other is frantically writing, rather than one person trying to keep an eye on birds AND write at the same time. It could be helpful to take photos, too, which helps you square your observations with what you wrote down later. While at the site, please take the GPS coördinates of the spot you were observing the birds.
Here are some potential target areas:
San Fernando Valley
- Mason Ave. north of Pierce College (north of the 101) all the way up to Chatsworth St. (park and ride for Orange Line, all kinds of commercial areas with fast-food places, and a feed store across from Mason Park on the far north end (not far from the 118).
- De Soto Ave. has similar sites on a traverse from the 101 to the 118 (with onramps/offramps off both freeways)
- Tampa Ave. has lots of retail, including a major regional mall, and a lot of pigeons at several intersections
- Reseda Blvd. is a cornucopia of pigeons (and onramps/offramps for both freeways), with Reseda Park and its duck pond a place where people feed pigeons and ducks, lots of retailing, and a railroad underpass where the birds often gather and nest, and Northridge Park.
- Sepulveda Blvd. has lots of retail and motels, a major mall (the infamous Galleria of Valley Girl fame), lots of fast food.
- Van Nuys Blvd. is pretty much solid retailing and there are quite a few flocks
San Gabriel Valley
- Foothill Blvd. runs east-west from Sunland in the west off the 210 alllll the way through Tujunga, La Crescenta, La Cañada-Flintridge, ending at Oak Grove Park (just south of JPL) with good access to the 210 there, too.
- Colorado Blvd. is another major east-west drag running from Glendale (it starts at I-5 as Colorado St., becoming Colorado Blvd. near the 2) through Eagle Rock into the San Gabriel Valley proper in Pasadena into Arcadia and Monrovia (fairly close to the 210).
- Valley Blvd. runs through much of the San Gabriel Valley from Lincoln Park through Rosemead and El Monte into City of Industry to the 57. A lot of industrial and commercial sites.
So, what I'm looking for is data from these more interior valley locations. I've suggested a few main drags that should afford a lot of pigeon watching opportunities. Using Google Earth in the lab and consulting with me, pick a general route that takes you by fast-food, shopping centers, gas stations, a park or two, and maybe an underpass or two as they like to nest under them. Then, go out in the field, driving along your planned routes and, when you spot some birds, stop, fill out your paperwork, GPS the location, and start counting pigeons and their color patterns and see if any courtships happen.
Your goal is to visit 4 sites (if solo) or 6 sites (if a pair) and amass data on at least 30 pigeons.
Writing up Your Results
Fill out the field data entry form during your visit and bring them to class by November 11th, together with any field notes for questions or clarifications or reactions you may have. Please be very careful to describe where, exactly, you set up each Pigeon Watch. Be sure to print a map of each area, marking it with your site(s). You can use Thomas Bros. map pages or online map providers, such as Google Maps, Bing Maps, or Mapquest. Please provide GPS coördinates on your forms (GPS Status app for Android or any comparable app for iPhones that can give you GPS coördinates in decimal degree form: DD.DDDDDD°). It is easiest to do this with a cell phone app on site, but you can also "back-engineer" the latitude and longitude later using Google Earth (click on Tools, Options, and, under 3D View, select DecimalDegrees under Show Lat/Lon, and you'll see the latitude and longitude corresponding to your Pigeon Watch location on the bottom).
GPS?
One of the most important field skills to have these days for biogeography and environmental monitoring is use of the Geographical Positioning System, or GPS. GPS débuted as a really expensive technology when regular people (not just the military) were allowed to use the system back in the 1990s. Our department has some high end Trimble GPS receivers that collect information from the GPS satellite network AND from navigational buoys and other ground control points. Less precise and accurate but still really impressive is our collection of handheld Garmin eTrex units. What we DO have, however, is access to smart phone apps that exploit the GPS in your telephone and, from my comparisons of their performance with the Department's Garmins, they are quite comparable. Their only limitation is you need to be in range of a cell phone tower (so, if you are out in the tules doing fieldwork, you might not be able to get by with the cell phone versions, a limitation that won't affect us in the urban and suburban settings for your PigeonWatch sites). Before you go into the field, download/install one of these:- Android phones: You want to get the free GPS Status & Toolbox app by EclipSim from the Google Play store. Here are the appropriate settings (metric everything and lat., lon. in decimal degrees)
- Under Settings, Units & Formatting, Location Format, pick DD.DDDDDD° (decimal degrees), and go through all menus to choose metric units; and
- under GPS & Sensors, make sure that Mean Sea Level altitude is UNchecked so altitude is shown in the WGS84 datum (datum selection is the feature I can't find on iPhone apps).
- iPhones: Here are a couple of possibilities on the Apple Store (I can't evaluate them because I have an Android)
- There's a GPS Status for iPhone
- Jason Attard's Find My Latitude and Longitude
- Zhang Bozheng's Latitude and Longitude Plus
It is important to make sure you can view latitude and longitude coördinates in decimal degree format, e.g.,34.12547°N, instead of 34*deg; 7' 32" N, or you will have some math conversion to do later (:-o
Then, every time you set up shop to count pigeons (at least 3 sites), put your latitude and longitude coördinates on the habitat form and on the tally sheet, making sure to enter 5 or 6 decimal places of accuracy, so I can get your data point into the Google Earth map later. Be sure to put in the address and/or cross streets and town, too. First, fill out the habitat form for the site. Then, work on the tally form: Closely observe the birds, count the size of the flock, count up the number of the different morphs in the flock, and keep your eyes peeled for flirtatious male pigeons pestering (what they hope are) hens. Do this twice some minutes apart at each site. Before you leave your site, check that everything is accounted for on the forms and consistent.
Uploading Your Results
Please do your PigeonWatches by 11 November. Then, upload them to the Dropbox for PigeonWatch. Deliverables include:- PigeonWatch data entry spreadsheet filled out for each of your sites
- Photos of your flocks (optional but helpful to you in checking your data)