Category: Birds

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UBAP leader A Rahlin presents Chicagoland ornithological research

UBAP leader Anastasia Rahlin presented two talks recently.

In January Rahlin presented “Oak Masting in the Chicagoland Region” at the Cook County Forest Preserve District – Resource Management talk as part of CCFPD’s Environmental Education program.

Rahlin and collaborators have been collecting oak masting data in the Chicagoland region over a seven-year period from 2017-2023. The talk focused on data regarding northern red, white, and bur oaks and discussed the history of oak masting research, outlined potential hypotheses that explain the likelihood of mast seeding events, and explored preliminary model results linking weather factors such as temperature and precipitation to acorn masts.
This study examines the impact of oak masting on Red-headed Woodpecker populations, an acorn caching species. Preliminary analyses linking acorn masts to Red-headed Woodpecker presence/absence and whether masting influences Red-headed Woodpecker overwintering in northern Illinois sites were also discussed.
In February, Rahlin presented  “Investigating Extreme Weather Impacts on Sedge and Marsh Wren food limitation and nesting success” at the McHenry County Forest Preserve District Research Roundup talk series.
Rahlin has been examining how habitat quality and extreme weather events impact marsh and wet meadow species in northern Illinois. Her talk focused on continued efforts to monitor marsh and sedge wren body condition through wren morphometrics and blood metabolites in order to understand how the two species respond to droughts and storms. Rahlin also discussed nesting outcomes for both wren species, as well as avenues for future research.
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Even small urban wetlands can support wetland birds

The landscape surrounding wetlands does not determine use by most wetland birds according to a new study by UBAP Ornithologist Anastasia Rahlin and collaborators Sarah P. Saunders (National Audubon) and Stephanie Beilke (Audubon Great Lakes).

The three researchers have been studying marsh birds in the Chicagoland area for the past 3 years, and their results indicate that even small scale wetland conservation in developed areas can be beneficial to many wetland birds.

Rahlin says, “to me, it’s a hopeful message that yes, restoration does work and is important even in small urban wetlands.”

Read the paper in Ecosphere
U of I News Release
Learn more about this research

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Five year, $6 million contract awarded to UBAP team

The Urban Biotic Assessment Program was awarded $6,226,400 to continue providing technical assistance to the Illinois Tollway Environmental team.

This is the third intergovernmental agreement between the INHS and the Illinois Tollway and will allow the continuation of this mutually beneficial partnership that began in 2005.

The partnership has grown from monitoring Blanding’s Turtles in the Des Plaines River Valley to a multi-disciplinary program. While the key function is to provide the ecological knowledge necessary to comply with state and federal regulations, both organizations share a goal of studying the natural resources of the region to protect them into the future.

Research projects in this new agreement include biotic surveys of each of the Tollway corridors, continuation of longterm monitoring of the Kishwaukee River mussel population, using eDNA to detect cryptic species, Rusty Patched Bumble Bee surveys, and identifying bat roost trees.

Download our report of activities from 2015-2020

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2021 NRES Symposium

PACE Lab graduate students presented at the Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences Symposium, April 17th, 2021.

    • Alma C. Schrage presented “Bumble Bee Detection and Occupancy in Northern Illinois” Click for more info
    • Devin Edmonds presented “Informing the Mantella cowanii Conservation Action Plan” Click for more info
    • Anastasia Rahlin presented “Spatial and temporal drivers of marsh bird occupancy in an urbanized matrix” Click for more info
    • Tyler Stewart presented “Distribution and Detection Probability for Kirtland’s Snake (Clonophis kirtlandii)” Click for more info
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Wild Things Conference goes virtual

Asya recording dataThis year, the Wild Things Conference will be virtual and held over two weekends, with live events as well as pre-recorded talks. UBAP ornithologist Asya Rahlin and her collaborators Stephanie Beilke (Audubon Great Lakes), and Libby Keyes (Governors State University) will have a streaming session going during both weekends of the conference.

Their talk, “A New Bird Banding Station Lands in Chicago” will discuss their project establishing a bird banding station at Big Marsh in the Calumet Region.
Learn about the Chicago Ornithological Society’s bird banding station, which debuted at Big Marsh in 2020, and what they hope to find from using this new banding station to spur research and outreach in the Calumet region.

Wild Things 2021: Part 1 will take place February 19-21

Wild Things 2021: Part 2 will take place February 26-28

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PaCE Lab at the Illinois State Fair

Smokey Bear using snake tongs

Members of the PaCE Lab exhibited in Conservation World at the 2019 Illinois State Fair, providing information and education to over 500 visitors. In addition to displays about the research being done by the group, visitors were able to try their hand at using actual field equipment used by scientists in their daily work.

The Illinois Bat Conservation Program had a mist net deployed where visitors could untangle, identify, and measure bats, all while wearing leather gloves.

The Amphibian and Reptile Conservation group had snake tongs, hooks, calipers, and radio telemetry equipment available for visitors to try to wrangle snakes into a snake bag, measure turtles, or track a hidden turtle.

Other activities included Build-a-Bug, where people can assemble the arthropod of their dreams (or nightmares) from a variety of general and specialized appendages, Wheel of Migration, about the risks migratory birds face, and locating PIT-tagged animals.

Smokey Bear using snake tongs
Gray Treefrog picked the right tent to visit
Wheel of Migration
Build a Bug
Vin Vasive wrangling a snake with a hook
Build-a-Bug
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UBAP Ornithologist Rahlin receives Kushlan Research Award

Black-crowned Night Heron
Black-crowned Night Heron

UBAP Ornithologist Anastasia Rahlin received the Kushlan Research Award  from the Waterbird Society to assist her research project entitled “Using environmental DNA sampling to determine heron and bittern occupancy in western and northern Michigan: a metagenomics approach.”

This work will improve knowledge of the ranges and population sizes of Black-crowned Night Herons, Yellow-crowned Night Herons, American Bitterns, and Least Bitterns and will inform conservation and management decisions for these rare and declining wetland birds.

 

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9 days, 3 conferences, 8 talks, 2 posters

It’s been a busy week of sharing science for members of the PACE lab.

The Chicago Wilderness Wildlife Committee Meeting was held at Lincoln Park Zoo on February 19th:

 

Tara Hohoff presented “The status of Illinois bats five years after confirmation of white-nose syndrome,” using data from her work with the Illinois Bat Conservation Program and the Urban Biotic Assessment Program monitoring for the Illinois Tollway.

 

Joshua Sherwood presented “Assessing the distribution and habitat of Iowa Darters (Etheostoma exile) in Illinois,” with co-authors Andrew Stites, Jeremy Tiemann, and Michael Dreslik. This work changed the way people look for the Iowa Darter.

 

Jason Robinson presented “Patterns of abundance and co-occurrence of bumblebees associated with the Rusty Patched bumblebee.” RPBB is a federally protected species found in northeastern Illinois that has experienced a decline in its range.

 

Jason Ross presented “Demographic influence of head-starting on a Blanding’s Turtle (Emydoidea blandingii) population in DuPage County, Illinois,” with co-author Michael Dreslik, discussing what amount of head-starting is needed to keep this population viable

 

The  2019 Wild Things Conference was held in Rosemont on February 23rd:

Tara Hohoff, representing the Illinois Bat Conservation Program, presented a poster “Year Three of the Illinois Bat Conservation Program.”

Anastasia Rahlin co-presented “Secretive Marsh Birds in the Big City.” with Audubon collaborator Stephanie Beilke on their ongoing work using playback to detect 17 focal wetland bird species in northeast Illinois and southeast Indiana. Soras were the most commonly detected species which was surprising/unexpected since Marsh Wrens and Swamp Sparrows are expected to be more common, and Little Blue Herons and Yellow-headed Blackbirds were the least detected which was pretty expected due to their declines. Future directions include creating species-specific occupancy models to better understand how our focal species respond to urbanization and presence of different wetland types at three different spatial scales.

Josh Sherwood presented “Current status of Bigeye Chub (Hybopsis amblops) in Illinois”.

Sarah Douglass presented “A preliminary analysis of mussel population dynamics in the Kishwaukee River.”

Jeremy Tiemann presented “Pulling the plug – Results of the fish and mussel salvage following the removal of the Danville Dam on the Vermilion River.”

Andy Stites presented a poster “Fecundity estimates of the Gravel Chub Erimystax x-punctatus“