Wintering Ecology of Shrubland Birds: Linking Landscape and Habitat

Abstract : The objectives of this study are to investigate for shrubland birds: 1) habitat associations on the wintering grounds, 2) climate influences on wintering distributions, and 3) breeding-wintering ground connectivity using stable isotopes. The Annual Report is a summary of the data collected during the first field season of winter 2005/06 and therefore, all results reported in this document should be viewed as preliminary. This study was conducted on eight DoD installations: Barry M. Goldwater Range - East, Edwards Air Force Base, Fort Bliss, Fort Irwin, Fort Huachuca, Naval Weapons Center China Lake - North Range, White Sands Missile Range, and Yuma Proving Grounds. We delineated the study boundary according to wintering shrubland species distributions, derived from long-term Christmas Bird Count data (delivered to DoD Legacy in 2005), which overlapped with five TNC ecoregions (Fig. 1).