Lab 3 Dataset 4 - Bird Species Abundance at York University Danby Woods

Introduction:
The objective of this dataset was to gather the species of birds present in the area (for both grassland and woodlot), the distance they were from the transect, and how many of each species were there. The lab was carried out on Wednesday, September 30, 2015. Materials:
The materials we used were two transects, a binocular, paper, and pencil for recording data. Site:
The data was collected at York University’s Danby Woods in both the grassland and the woodlot near the northeastern side of the campus. The climate was a little chilly due to the light wind, but it was sunny too. The Beaufort Scale for that day was around 2-4 with the light breeze. However, it was a little cooler in the woodlands because there was no sun due to the dense canopy of leaves. In the grasslands, most of the tall plants seemed to have been trimmed down compared to the last time we were there. In the woodlands, there were many trees of various ages, but no animals were present at the time because of the change in season. Method: The experiment was carried out by us laying out one transect along a path where the trees were, since the birds usually inhabit there. Then, we waited for the birds to fly over or around the transect. If there weren’t any visible birds, we would use the binocular to search for them or listen to their chirps. We repeated this process until we got five recorded data for both the grasslands and the woodlot (five for each). We noticed that there were not many birds that were visible. This could be because of the changing seasons and most of the birds have migrated already. However, there were an abundant amount of starlings in the grasslands and sparrows in the woodlot. Group Members: Sajid Alvi, Anisa Amin, James Quach, Iiman Darman