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Project Tanager Update
Volunteers census nearly 2,000 sites across North America After one year as a pilot program, Project Tanager has just competed its first summer as a full-scale research program. We sincerely thank all of you who volunteered to study breeding tanagers with us. The number of people and groups requesting participants’ kits exceeded our most optimistic projections—in fact, we ran out of kits and had to arrange for a hurried second printing. After the dust had settled, we found that we had mailed participants’ kits to more than 1,500 individuals or teams in the United States and Canada. Some states and provinces, such as Virginia and Ontario, had such a good response that volunteers took over the task of coordinating all the tanager-watchers to prevent folks from unknowingly tripping over each other as they censused the same sites. Now tanager data forms are arriving daily at the Bird Population Studies office. We are anxious to delve into the data—the results of our findings will be published in a future issue of Birdscope. Meanwhile, here is a brief update on the status of Project Tanager. So far, we have received data from more than twice as many study sites as we did last year. Of the four species of tanagers in this study, the Scarlet Tanager generated the most data forms: more than 1,500 sites were censused. This result isn’t surprising, since the Scarlet Tanger is found in the most populated areas of the continent. We’ve also received about 400 data forms documenting Western Tanagers, and 350 for Summer Tanagers. As was the case in the pilot study, few participants documented Hepatic Tanagers. So far we’ve received only 17 data forms, which is not enough to draw any conclusions about this species. We asked participants to comment on Project Tanager, and one of the overriding themes was that you enjoyed the project and want to do it again. Many of you said you have ideas for improving your tanager techniques and are anxious to put your plans into action next spring. Not being able to find nests easily has been frustrating for all of us. And timing is everything: trying to figure out what’s happening during the tanager nesting cycle while juggling jobs, families, and life in general is difficult, and then—poof!—the nesting season is over for another year. Many of you said that you had seen tanagers many times, but never really looked at them before this project. You also said that this project taught you more about the natural world than you expected. Our goal is to gather data on tanagers, but it’s gratifying to know that the tanager project has perhaps opened a door for many of you—creating more awareness of your surroundings and instilling in some of you a curiosity about just what’s going on in your woods. On the down side, the completed data forms we have received represent but a fraction of the forms we initially mailed out—a little over 20 percent of participants have returned forms as of this writing. This is down from a 45 percent return rate last year. We find this decline puzzling, because we worked hard to make it easier for you to select study sites and collect data this year. We wonder whether some of you felt that your lack of data meant that it wasn’t worth sending in the forms; that you let us down if you did not record any tanagers on your study plots. Nothing could be farther from the truth! "Negative" data is crucial to our analyses; knowing about the absence of tanagers is just as vital to us as knowing about their presence. So please send in those data forms. We would like to increase our sample sizes—not only does it give more credence to our findings, but it helps us to formulate new research goals. We are hoping to conduct another field season of Project Tanager in 1995. If you received a participants’ kit last spring, hang on to it; we will keep you posted about any changes in methodology. If you haven’t been a Project Tanager volunteer before but are interested in participating, just return the coupon from this newsletter and we will add your name to our mailing list. We especially encourage participation from those of you in Hepatic Tanager territory. James D. Lowe
and Pixie Senesac are research biologists for |
