Saving wildlife: Using geology to track elusive hawks

Date:  November 7, 2018

Source:  University of Cincinnati

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati are perfecting an innovative way to track the migration of elusive wildlife to help in their conservation.

UC professor Brooke Crowley studies feathers plucked from hawks captured for leg-banding in Idaho. Cooper's hawks and sharp-shinned hawks are small, predatory raptors that live across North America. They can be difficult to study because of their secretive natures.

"They're hard to find. They're cryptic birds that are solitary. They're quiet. They hide," Crowley said.

Crowley, an associate professor of geology and anthropology, is no stranger to her research subjects. Her father is a lifelong falconer who worked with these small hawks when she was growing up in Colorado.

"Cooper's hawks are like little dinosaurs. They're pretty vicious," she said.

Traditionally, biologists studied birds by placing numbered bands on their legs and recapturing them. Because they are so wide-ranging, few banded birds are ever caught twice. More recently, biologists have used satellite telemetry or transmitters that record the sunrise and sunset to track migration around the world.

But UC's approach can do something these other tools can't: pin down where birds hatched. And this could help wildlife conservationists identify the most important habitat for the birds' long-term survival.

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Why you can thank geology for your morning songbird chorus

New research shows how geology drove the diversification and spread of songbirds, the world’s most abundant bird group

Hanneke Meijer

Wednesday 19 October 2016 11.53 BST Last modified on Wednesday 19 October 2016 18.27 BST 

Today, songbirds are the most successful group of birds on the planet. With more than 5000 species worldwide, they form half of the world’s known bird species, and have colonised almost all corners of the world (with the exception of Antarctica). 

Songbirds, or Passeriformes, are often referred to as “perching birds”, which refers to the arrangement of their toes - with three toes pointing forward and one pointing backwards - which allows them to comfortably cling to trees and branches. But to the outside world, they are best known for their well-developed vocalisations. Who hasn’t delighted in waking up in the middle of a summer night by birds enthusiastically welcoming the new day?

Zoologists divide modern songbirds in three groups. Oscines (Passeri) constitute over 4000 species and can be found all over the world. Suboscines (Tyranni) are mostly found in the Neotropics, whereas the small New Zealand wrens (Acanthisitti) are limited to, you guessed it, New Zealand.

As abundant and widespread as songbirds are today, their fossil record is meager, especially the further we go back in time. The earliest known songbird as we know them comes from the early Eocene (approximately 54 million years ago) Tingamarra fauna from Murgon in southeastern Queensland, Australia (Boles, 1997). The specimen consists of only two bones, a carpometacarpus and a tibiotarsus, but exhibits anatomical features that are also found within modern day songbirds. But how did this group rise from the isolated Australian continent to worldwide domination?

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