A Comparison of Two Bird Survey Techniques Used in a Subtropical Forest

Abstract

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Bird census and survey techniques

“…Transects can be usefully supplemented and, to some degree, verified in combination with other count methods such as sound recording, mist netting, and tape playback (e.g. Whitman et al 1997;Haselmayer and Quinn 2000).…”

The Scale of Community Structure: Habitat Variation and Avian Guilds in Tropical Forest Understory

“…Both point counts and mist netting have detectable capture biases (Rappole et al 1998, Silkey et al 1999. Mist nets are known to be biased against canopy species (Terborgh and Weske 1969) and can be less efficient than point counts in terms of observations per worker-hour (e.g., Terborgh et al 1990, Whitman et al 1997. However, mist netting has the three distinct advantages over point counts in (1) being less susceptible to observer bias; (2) enabling the identification of individuals, recaptures, and movement among sites; and (3) allowing much more certainty in identification of cryptic congeneric species (Ralph et al 1995).…”

Evaluation of methodological protocols using point counts and mist nets: a case study in southeastern Brazil

“…This was true for several species exclusively recorded by nets, such as Geotrygon violacea. Nonetheless, only one secretive, non-endemic and not threatened species (M. atricaudus) was detected exclusively during 3-day mist netting sections, suggesting that a 3-day sampling effort will not detect conservation-value species in our study sites (Whitman et al, 1997;Derlindati & Caziani, 2005;Estades et al, 2006).…”

“…Two principal methodologies have been used to obtain this information: mist nets and audio-visual counts (Blake & Loiselle, 2001). Both methods have been compared as survey techniques (Gram & Faaborg, 1997;Poulin et al, 2000), offering benefits and costs (Wallace et al, 1996;, while providing different perspectives on community structure (Whitman et al, 1997;Blake & Loiselle, 2000). Decades ago, several authors noted that mist nets do not provide trustworthy relative abundance estimates among different species, estimates of absolute density of the same species in the same habitat, or the inability of sampling vertical strata, especially those with canopies above net height (MacArthur & MacArthur, 1974;Karr, 1981).…”