GEOG 442
Biogeography
Urban Biogeography Self-Guided Field Trip
Urban Fauna: Field Observation
Student who missed the regular field trip in GEOG/ES&P 330 will do a "pigeon watch," instead. They will follow the procedure of the late great PigeonWatch project at Cornell University, Department of Ornithology.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) collected simple data for processing by others elsewhere. Other examples of citizen sicence projects are Tokyo University's International Pellet Watch program to monitor persistent organic pollutants in "nerdles" washed up on beaches, the California State Water Resources Board Clean Water Team citizen water monitoring program, and the SETI @ Home screensaver program. Other citizen science projects can be found at Zooniverse and Scientific American's citizen science page and through search engines.
Since your professor is notoriously and inordinately fond of pigeons, in this case, Columba livia, this lab will follow the Pigeon Watch protocol.
Getting Your Data
Doing a Pigeon Watch entails visiting a site frequented by pigeons somewhere in the region, whether urban commercial, industrial, suburban, or coastal, 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 a copy of the Pigeonwatch Habitat Form and the PigeonWatch Tally Sheet.
Read the "Why study pigeons?" article by Melinda S. LaBranche to become familiar with the goals of the project.
Over the years, my students have acquired data on over 6.500 pigeons and over 600 courtships among them. You can 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 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 team up into the San Fernando Valley to survey several sites there. One of these is Stoney Point Ranch in the northwestern corner of the Valley (where I keep my horses and where there's a large flock of pigeons -- I've arranged with the stable owner to have you count pigeons all over the ranch -- she said the flock is the largest in the morning, so that might be a good spot to start). There are several other locations, too, and I'll get you directions for each of these. I'd like you to spend a full day out there, visiting as many of these sites as you can.
Later, this will be the basis of your group research project. I'll share with you your predecessors' data, and you can do statistical comparisons and contrasts with these and "your" birds.
Writing up Your Results
Fill out the field data entry form during your visit and bring them to class by April 8th, 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, Yahoo Maps, MapBlast, or Mapquest. Ideally, 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, but you can also "back-engineer" the latitude and longitude 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).My sneaking suspicion after having pigeons for several decades is that sexual selection may have little to do with the maintenance of morphic diversity against natural selection pressure for cryptic coloration: The various morphs are constantly being re-introduced by coop escapees. Humans have selected for white, pied, grizzled, black, red, and any number of other odd colors and patterns. Indeed, many domestic breeds are defined by particular coloring or bizarre feather patterns, among other traits. And every pigeon breeder regularly loses birds. Those that are at least minimally fit flyers have at least a small chance at survival in the "wild," and these survivors bring their odd colors with them. So, the Cornell lab focusses on sexual selection, while I suspect migration from domestic flocks maintains the small numbers of strange colors out there.