The Socorro dove Zenaida graysoni , endemic to Socorro Island, was last reported in the wild in 1972. Fortunately, the species has been propagated in zoos in Europe and the United States, and plans are under way to re-introduce it to its native habitat. This will be the first known attempt to return a bird species extinct in the wild to its ancestral island. In order to assess the disease threa...

Recent field efforts in the Mahajanga Basin of northwestern Madagascar have recovered a diverse Late Cretaceous terrestrial and freshwater vertebrate fauna, including a growing diversity of avialans. Previous work on associated bird skeletons resulted in the description of two named avialans (Rahonavis, Vorona). Other materials, including two synsacra and numerous appendicular elements, represe...

2 Wildlife biologist, George Whittell Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, Monterey County SPCA, Monterey, California; Senior Associate, Philip Williams & Associates, San Francisco. Abstract: Avian abundance and diversity were measured at 5 sites in the riparian zone of the Carmel River, selected to represent different conditions of riparian vegetation, in the spring of 1983. Vegetation varied from ...

We compared breeding bird populations on and off of the Savannah River Site (SRS), South Carolina, to determine whether management practices on SRS have affected abundance and composition of the resident avifauna. We assessed relative abundance by comparing Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) data from six routes off SRS with three surrogate routes generated using point-count data from four research pro...

Urban expansion significantly alters fringe environments often with undesirable impacts on biodiversity. Consequently, there is a need to define clear conservation objectives for areas subject to urban encroachment. Urban fringe development is a highly dynamic process, both spatially and temporally, but few studies are equipped to examine its temporal effects on biota. We aimed to explore the i...

Patterns of taxonomic differentiation and geographical distribution of West Indian birds suggest that taxa may pass through phases of increasing and decreasing geographical range. Such sequences are referred to as taxon cycles. Although decline may often lead to extinction, new phases of expansion, accompanied by increased or shifted habitat distribution are also possible. The taxon cycle is a ...