WildResearch Nightjar Survey News

1. Priority Sign Up for 2017 Survey Season

*If you surveyed last year, please have a quick read through this section and follow the instructions below by Wednesday May 10, 2017*

Every year, we offer volunteers from the previous year priority for route sign up, and that time has come for 2017! All last year's volunteers, please choose one of the following options:

• If you signed up for a 1 year adoption last year and would like to survey that route again, please re-adopt your route with your Atlas account. You can sign up for another year or adopt your route indefinitely. If you choose 'Indefinitely', you won't have to do this again next year! And you can always retire from your route at any time through your Atlas account.
• If you signed up for a 1 year adoption last year and do not want to survey again, do nothing! We will open all routes that are not re-adopted for general sign up on Thursday May 11.
• If you signed up for an Indefinite adoption last year and do not want to survey again, please retire from your route with your Atlas account.
• If you signed up for an Indefinite adoption last year and would like to survey that route again, do nothing! That's the beauty of the Indefinite option.

2. 2017 Season Upcoming

For those of you who didn't survey last year, official sign-up will begin next week on Friday May 12! It's best to hold off until then so that we have a chance to open up routes from last year that aren't being readopted again this year. We will send another short email to announce official sign-up.

The survey protocol will be identical to last year as we continue to follow the Canadian Nightjar Survey Protocol. Unfortunately, the protocol has not been translated into French yet; our apologies. The English version is available on the WildResearch website here.

The survey season will run June 15 - July 15, 2017. For those of you in areas where you might detect Common Poorwill or Eastern Whip-poor-will, the preferred survey dates within a week of the full moon will be June 15 - 17 and June 30 - July 15 for 2017.


3. Seeking Atlas Beta Testers

We've been working hard with our web designer this winter to completely overhaul the data entry portal on the Nightjar Atlas and we think it's finally ready for testing. We know how challenging the data entry portal was last year, so we need your help to make sure it's easier this year! The only way to be sure we catch all the bugs is by as many people trying to enter data as possible.

If you're willing to help out, the data entry portal is live at www.nightjar.ca. Just sign in to your Atlas account, go to 'Enter My Survey Data', and have at 'er! Below is a screen shot of some (incredibly tidy) test data if you want to try entering real data. Just enter it for one of the routes you're already signed up for. Please enter any data as surveyed in 2020 to make it easier for us to clean up after.

Feedback can be emailed to me (Elly) at eknight@wildresearch.ca. All comments are helpful, but we're specifically looking for feedback on:

• General workflow: does the in-line data entry format make intuitive sense?
• Any aspects that are difficult to figure out and that would benefit from inclusion in a tutorial video?
• Any bugs encountered? We've found one in the temperature field already...

 4. Welcome Interim Coordinators Sam & Shayna

Please join us in a warm welcome to interim coordinators Sam Haché and Shayna Hamilton! Sam is a Wildlife Biologist with Canadian Wildlife Service will and be coordinating the Northwest Territories region this year. Shayna is just finishing up her B.Sc. at the University of Regina and will be coordinating the Saskatchewan region this year. Both are knowledgeable about nightjars and keen to help folks in their region get out to survey for nightjars! Sam and Shayna are stepping in for Rhiannon in NWT and Gabe in SK, who are both off on amazing adventures this year!

As a reminder, your regional coordinators are:

• British Columbia: Paul Preston nightjars.bc@wildresearch.ca
• Alberta: Elly Knight nightjars.ab@wildresearch.ca
• Saskatchewan: Shayna Hamilton nightjars.sk@wildresearch.ca
• Yukon: Andrea Sidler nightjars.yt@wildresearch.ca
• Northwest Territories: Sam Haché nightjars.nwt@wildresearch.ca
• New Brunswick: Virginia Noble nightjars.nb@wildresearch.ca
   

1. Where does the data go?

We get a lot of questions about 'Where does the data go?', and 'What is the data for?'. Well we're happy to tell that you that all the WildResearch Nightjar Survey data from 2010 to 2016 has been contributed to a national database for Common Nighthawk habitat modelling! The habitat models produced will help inform the definition of Common Nighthawk critical habitat, and help with conservation of the species. Thanks to so many citizen scientists distributed across the country, the WildResearch Nightjar Data comprised a large portion of the database and will contribute substantially to conservation initiatives!

And as always, the data is also freely available on NatureCounts.


2. SK Coordinator Gabe Foley Presents Nighthawk Research

Saskatchewan Coordinator Gabriel Foley presented his M.Sc. research at the University of Regina departmental seminar last month and recorded the talk live on Periscope! Gabe is studying Common Nighthawk habitat selection and has some interesting results to share on what habitat features are associated with nighthawk roost sites. Check out his talk here! Make sure to scroll to 08:30 for Gabe's impression of a nighthawk wingboom (mask included).

3. Eastern Whip-poor-will Migratory Connectivity

Newly minted Ph.D. Philina English has just published the second paper from her research! Philina and her coauthors used light-level geolocators to track Eastern Whip-poor-wills during migration and overwintering for the first time! The 20 tracked birds overwintered between central Mexico and Costa Rica. You can read the full paper open access here.

4. Repeat migration of a European Nightjar

Hot off the press today, researchers in Belgium tracked a single juvenile nightjar over two annual cycles, finding that the individual used the same migration stopovers and overwintering grounds on both years! The individual also showed the same loop migration previously shown in other European Nightjar migration studies. The paper is available in the Journal of Ornithology here.
 

5. Thermoregulation of African Nightjars

One of the remarkable traits of many nightjar species is their ability to tolerate high temperatures while incubating and roosting. Ryan O'Connor and his colleagues have recently published two studies comparing the Rufous-cheeked Nightjar and the Freckled Nightjar. You can check out their research in the Journal of Avian Biology here and the Journal of Comparative Physiology here.