- Published: March 10, 2016
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0150899
Abstract
Private gardens provide habitat and resources for many birds living in human-dominated landscapes. While wild bird feeding is recognised as one of the most popular forms of human-wildlife interaction, almost nothing is known about the use of bird baths. This citizen science initiative explores avian assemblages at bird baths in private gardens in south-eastern Australia and how this differs with respect to levels of urbanisation and bioregion. Overall, 992 citizen scientists collected data over two, four-week survey periods during winter 2014 and summer 2015 (43% participated in both years). Avian assemblages at urban and rural bird baths differed between bioregions with aggressive nectar-eating species influenced the avian assemblages visiting urban bird baths in South Eastern Queensland, NSW North Coast and Sydney Basin while introduced birds contributed to differences in South Western Slopes, Southern Volcanic Plains and Victorian Midlands. Small honeyeaters and other small native birds occurred less often at urban bird baths compared to rural bird baths. Our results suggest that differences between urban versus rural areas, as well as bioregion, significantly influence the composition of avian assemblages visiting bird baths in private gardens. We also demonstrate that citizen science monitoring of fixed survey sites such as bird baths is a useful tool in understanding large-scale patterns in avian assemblages which requires a vast amount of data to be collected across broad areas.Figures
Citation: Cleary GP,
Parsons H, Davis A, Coleman BR, Jones DN, Miller KK, et al. (2016)
Avian Assemblages at Bird Baths: A Comparison of Urban and Rural Bird
Baths in Australia. PLoS ONE 11(3):
e0150899.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150899
Editor: Srinand Sreevatsan, University of Minnesota, UNITED STATES
Received: November 26, 2015; Accepted: February 19, 2016; Published: March 10, 2016
Copyright: © 2016 Cleary et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.
Funding: Gráinne P Cleary was funded by National Parks Association of NSW. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. Co-author Bill R. Coleman is employed by Evolve Information Services. This author's contribution to the research and the writing of this paper was done in his own time and he did not work on the research or paper during the hours he was working for Evolve. Evolve Information Services provided support in the form of salary for author Coleman, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific role of this author is articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.
Competing interests: Co-author Bill R. Coleman is employed by Evolve Information Services. This author's contribution to the research and the writing of this paper was done in his own time and he did not work on the research or paper during the hours he was working for Evolve. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
Editor: Srinand Sreevatsan, University of Minnesota, UNITED STATES
Received: November 26, 2015; Accepted: February 19, 2016; Published: March 10, 2016
Copyright: © 2016 Cleary et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.
Funding: Gráinne P Cleary was funded by National Parks Association of NSW. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. Co-author Bill R. Coleman is employed by Evolve Information Services. This author's contribution to the research and the writing of this paper was done in his own time and he did not work on the research or paper during the hours he was working for Evolve. Evolve Information Services provided support in the form of salary for author Coleman, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific role of this author is articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.
Competing interests: Co-author Bill R. Coleman is employed by Evolve Information Services. This author's contribution to the research and the writing of this paper was done in his own time and he did not work on the research or paper during the hours he was working for Evolve. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
