Progress 06/12/00 to 09/30/04
Outputs
These is the final year for these two grants, which are for building research infrastructure, both personnel and equipment, at two sites in our pan-Hemispheric research network called 'Golondrinas de las Americas' (http://golondrinas.cornell.edu). Our activities at the Hill Bank Field Station of the Programme for Belize included on-going collection of core breeding biology data on the station's nest-box population of Tachycineta albilinea by staff of the Programme for Belize. The group of volunteer engineers that visited the Hill Bank station last year to diagnose electrical problems there published many of its findings in a consumer solar energy journal, and they continue to interface with Programme staff to try to improve that system. Work conducted at the Los Amigos station in Peru by former CU undergrad Loren Merill in very late 2003 yielded fruit in 2004 with the first Tachycineta albiventer nest in the Golondrinas network. In sum, the two Park Foundation grants
in this project have really gotten us launched in the Americas and have provided invaluable foundation for further grant-writing and further research. Research publications using data from these sites will be forthcoming.
Impacts
Hill Bank is the first tropical site in Golondrinas de las Americas, and Los Amigos is the first site prepared to support Tachycineta albiventer. In the Golondrinas network, scientists and naturalists throughout the Americas work together with the same methods and protocols to study the breeding biology of swallows in the genus Tachycineta. These scientists share training among sites, and they work together in the design of research questions and experiments. The Tachycineta system provides distinctive opportunities for focused hypothesis-testing research, ecological monitoring and education with students at all levels.
Publications
- Burch, E., Burch, J., Moore, J., and Winkler, D. W. 2004. Lessons: From solar electric systems in Belize. Home Power 102:62-67.
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Progress 01/01/03 to 12/31/03
Outputs
Our activities at the Hill Bank Field Station of the Programme for Belize included on-going collection of core breeding biology data on the stations nest-box population of Tachycineta albilinea by staff of the Programme for Belize and refinement of a research project on the feeding biology of Laughing Falcons by Cornell graduate student, Tabatha Bruce. Winkler worked with a group of volunteer engineers from the U.S. and the Programme staff to try to diagnose problems with the statiom's solar electrical generation and storage system, and the team visited Hill Bank in March 2003 to do detailed measurements, repairs and suggest improvements in the electrical systems at all of the Programme's field stations. Work at the Los Amigos station in Peru was conducted by former CU undergrad Loren Merill, who visited the Los Amigos site, constructed 100 nest-boxes and erected 35 boxes on poles in various localities around the station to assess the effects of variable water-heights
on nest-box longevity. Thus, the groundwork has successfully been laid for our first nest-box population of Tachycineta albiventer in the Golondrinas network.
Impacts
Hill Bank is the first tropical site in Golondrinas de las Americas, and Los Amigos is the first site prepared to support Tachycineta albiventer. In the Golondrinas network, scientists and naturalists throughout the Americas work together with the same methods and protocols to study the breeding biology of swallows in the genus Tachycineta. These scientists share training among sites, and they work together in the design of research questions and experiments. The Tachycineta system provides distinctive opportunities for focused hypothesis-testing research, ecological monitoring and education with students at all levels.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 01/01/02 to 12/31/02
Outputs
These two grants are for building research infrastructure, both personnel and equipment, at two sites in our pan-Hemispheric research network called `Golondrinas de las Americas' (http://golondrinas.cornell.edu). Our activities at the Hill Bank Field Station of the Programme for Belize included on-going collection of core breeding biology data on the station's nest-box population of Mangrove Swallows by staff of the Programme for Belize and refinement of a research project on the feeding biology of Laughing Falcons by Cornell graduate student, Tabatha Bruce. Winkler worked with an international group of volunteer engineers and the Programme staff to try to diagnose problems with the station's solar electrical generation and storage system, and he plans to visit the station in 2003 to repair the system. Work at the Los Amigos station in Peru continued to be hampered by staff changes and teaching obligations in the North, and Winkler and Wrege now plan to visit the
station in 2003 to initiate a nest-box population of White-winged Swallows there.
Impacts
This project is the first tropical site in a larger project called Golondrinas de las Americas (http://golondrinas.cornell.edu), a network of scientists and naturalists throughout the Americas, who work together with the same methods and protocols to study the breeding biology of swallows in the genus Tachycineta. These scientists share training among sites, and they work together in the design of research questions and experiments. The Tachycineta system provides distinctive opportunities for focused hypothesis-testing research, ecological monitoring and education with students at all levels.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 01/01/01 to 12/31/01
Outputs
These two grants are for building research infrastructure, in the form of personnel and equipment, at two sites in our pan-Hemispheric research network called `Golondrinas de las Americas.' These sites, Hill Bank, Belize, and Los Amigos, Peru, are at field stations run by the Programme for Belize and the Amazon Conservation Association, respectively. Research at Hill Bank is going extremely well, with the successful completion this year of the first phase of our work there: installation of an aerial insect sampler and completion of the first full year of population monitoring and breeding biology of the Mangrove Swallow population in nest-boxes there. Hill Bank was visited by Winkler's graduate student, Curtis Burney, and his Senior Research Associate, Peter Wrege, who, combined, spent approximately two months working there with Programme for Belize staff. A Cornell graduate student, Tabatha Bruce, has just returned from a very successful reconnaissance trip to
establish a study of Laughing Falcons at Hill Bank. Our work at the Los Amigos station in Amazonian Peru has been delayed by threats of violence from local lumbermen resenting the recent closure of large tracts of forest to logging. Regardless, nesting boxes are being erected there by the Station's director, Renando Valega, and Winkler and/or Wrege will visit there sometime in summer 2002 to work with Valega in making plans for the population study there and to plan the erection of a 12 m aerial insect sampler.
Impacts
This project, and the larger Golondrinas project, provide a distinctive network of interactions among scientists throughout the Americas, who work together with the same methods and protocols to study the breeding biology of swallows in the genus Tachycineta. These scientists share training among sites, and they work together in the design of research questions and experiments. This network has been launched in the American tropics with the grants from the Park Foundation.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 06/12/00 to 12/31/00
Outputs
This project this year concentrated on building the scientific infrastructure for a collaborative population study of the mangrove swallow at the Hill Bank Field Station of the Programme for Belize (PfB). The PfB's Naturalist from Hill Bank, David Tzul, worked with us on swallows in Ithaca in June, and he returned to Cornell for the Fall Academic Term to take Winkler's ornithology course. Tzul collaborated with us in making plans for the installation of an insect sampler at Hill Bank and I planning for the upcoming swallow breeding season at Hill Bank. For further details see: .
Impacts
Hill Bank is the flagship of what we hope will become a network of sites throughout the Americas, building scientific competency at the same time as we monitor and study the same related group of birds.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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