Assessing Landowner Activities Related to Birds Across Rural-to-Urban Landscapes

Lepczyk, Christopher A.; Mertig, Angela G.; Liu, Jianguo

doi:10.1007/s00267-003-0036-z

Cited by 134 publications

(124 citation statements)

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“…Data at county scale are relatively easy to obtain, but they may be uninformative, as demonstrated here. However, it is important to note that such socioeconomic patterns might not be universal; our findings contrast with those of Lepczyk et al (2004), who detected no influence of household size or wealth on levels of bird feeding in Michigan. A positive local relationship between the proportion of households feeding birds and household income makes intuitive sense, yet it suggests that human socioeconomic deprivation is directly related to the quality of the experience that people have of nature.…”

Section: Socioeconomic Correlates Of Bird Feedingcontrasting

confidence: 55%

“…Landowners participating in bird-feeding activity in southeastern Michigan tended to be older, were more likely to be women, and had achieved higher educational qualifications than those not participating (Lepczyk et al 2004). Bird feeding was not related to the number of dwelling occupants, their occupation, or dwelling size as measured by floor area.…”

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confidence: 86%

“…A recent study in southeastern Michigan, USA, found that while the proportion of landowners providing food for birds did not vary among rural, suburban, and urban landscapes, the density of bird feeders per land parcel was significantly higher in urban than in rural and suburban areas (Lepczyk et al 2004), presumably driven by the smaller size of plots in urban landscapes. If the density of human settlement predicts the density of bird feeders across the landscape, we might expect resource provision to occur disproportionately in (1) more densely populated regions and (2) more densely populated neighborhoods within cities.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Levels of bird feeding and other forms of wildlife gardening vary enormously across the human population (Lepczyk et al 2002(Lepczyk et al , 2004Gaston et al 2007). Landowners participating in bird-feeding activity in southeastern Michigan tended to be older, were more likely to be women, and had achieved higher educational qualifications than those not participating (Lepczyk et al 2004).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…The resource base of supplementary food is unlikely to be static over time. Lepczyk et al (2004) showed that the highest proportion of landowners feeding birds in southeastern Michigan occurred between December and March, with a decline through summer to autumn. Historically in the UK, feeding was mainly carried out in winter, in the belief that typical supplementary food types are unsuitable for fledglings and that adults could find all the natural food they needed during summer (Moss and Cottridge 1998).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Interactions between People and Birds in Urban Landscapes

Fuller¹,

Irvine²,

Davies³

et al. 2012

Urban Bird Ecology and Conservation

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Abstract. A large body of work over the past few decades has revealed the manifestly dramatic impacts of urbanization on species' distributions and ecologies, many of which result from gross changes in land use and configuration. Less well understood are the rather more direct interactions between people and biodiversity in the urban arena. While there is a general concern that urbanization impoverishes human contact with nature, daily interaction with biodiversity in urban greenspaces and the widespread provision of food and nesting resources for wildlife form a part of many city-dwellers' experience. Using data from the UK, we show that supplementary resource provision aimed explicitly at enhancing avian populations can result in high levels of additional foraging and nesting opportunities, particularly in urban areas. However, our data also indicate that levels of such resource provision are strongly positively correlated with human population density at a regional scale, and within a large city. The proportion of households participating in bird feeding depends on social and economic features of the human population, suggesting that strong covariation between human and ecological communities will result. Indeed, we demonstrate that the abundances of some urban-adapted bird species are positively related to the density of feeding stations across the urban landscape, although such relationships were not apparent for other species that commonly use garden feeding stations. It has been suggested that interactions with nature, such as feeding birds, could have beneficial consequences for human health. A better understanding of this potential feedback is required.

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Section: Socioeconomic Correlates Of Bird Feedingcontrasting

confidence: 55%

mentioning

confidence: 86%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Interactions between People and Birds in Urban Landscapes

Fuller¹,

Irvine²,

Davies³

et al. 2012

Urban Bird Ecology and Conservation

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Food resource richness increases seed disperser visitations and seed rain richness

Holdgrafer,

Mason,

Coleman

et al. 2024

Ecology and Evolution

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Within the context of global change, seed dispersal research often focuses on changes in disperser communities (i.e., seed dispersers, such as birds, in an area) resulting from habitat fragmentation. This approach may not be completely illustrative due to certain seed disperser communities being more robust to fragmentation. Additionally, this top‐down approach overlooks how changing food resources on landscapes impacts resource tracking and, subsequently, seed dispersal. We hypothesized resource tracking may promote diffuse plant–animal dispersal mutualisms if resource richness is positively linked to disperser and seed rain richness. We predicted increasing food resource richness attracts more visits and species of avian dispersers, resulting in higher counts and greater species richness of seeds deposited at sites (i.e., seed rain). We tested this mechanism in two replicated field experiments using a model system with bird feeders positioned above seed traps. In the first experiment, we demonstrated resource presence skews seed rain. In the second experiment, we explored how species richness of food resources (0, 4, 8, or 12 species) affected the species richness and visitation of avian seed dispersers at feeders and in subsequent seed rain. Collectively, we observed a positive relationship between available food resources and seed rain, likely mediated by resource tracking behavior of avian dispersers. Our findings underscore a potential key mechanism that may facilitate ecological diversity, whereby accumulating species richness in the plant community attracts a more diverse seed disperser community and indirectly promotes more species in seed rain. Importantly, the resource tracking mechanism driving this potential positive feedback loop may also result in negative ecosystem effects if global change diminishes resource availability through homogenization processes, such as invasive species colonization. Future research should explore the bottom‐up effects of global change on food resources and seed disperser behavior to complement the literature on changing disperser communities.

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The socioeconomic status of cities covaries with avian life‐history strategies

et al. 2022

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Cities are the planet's newest ecosystem and thus provide the opportunity to study community formation directly following major permanent environmental change. The human social and built components of environments can vary widely in different cities, yet it is largely unknown how features of cities covary with the traits of colonizing species despite humans being the ultimate cause of environments and disturbances in cities. We constructed a dataset from open-source data comprised of 13,502 breeding season observations of 213 passerine species observed in 551 Census-defined urban areas across the United States. We found that as a city became more compact with less sprawl it tended to support more migratory species and species with lower body mass, shorter lifespans, and larger clutches. We also found that species had lower body mass in cities with higher median income, and higher body mass in highly populated cities. Our results highlight the complexity of humandominated urban ecosystems, where human socioeconomic actions and everyday activities intermix leading to structurally heterogeneous environments that support the colonization of some species over others.

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Assessing Landowner Activities Related to Birds Across Rural-to-Urban Landscapes

Cited by 134 publications

References 5 publications

Interactions between People and Birds in Urban Landscapes

Interactions between People and Birds in Urban Landscapes

Food resource richness increases seed disperser visitations and seed rain richness

The socioeconomic status of cities covaries with avian life‐history strategies

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