Thesis (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available via Humboldt Digital Scholar.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains x, 98 p. : ill. (some col.), col. maps. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references. WVU users: Also available in print for a fee.

Agelaius phoeniceus (red-winged blackbird), Quiscalus quiscula (common grackle), and Sturnus vulgaris (European starling) are three of the most abundant bird species found in North America, and along with Euphagus carolinus (rusty blackbird) and Euphagus cyanocephalus (Brewer’s blackbird), make up a significant proportion of the avian population. Population trends of these four blackbird species and European starlings (EUST)were analyzed from the Christmas Bird Count (CBC) data collected between 1988 and 2008. Population analyses were conducted using linear mixed-effect regressions from the Lmer package of Program R. This approach was effective in modeling the population trends of widespread species with large populations. However, it was not as effective in modeling species with smaller populations and distributions. Only RWBL had significant change in population during the study period, showing a positive increase in mean count number of approximately 2.4% each year. Habitat selection showed some parallels among species.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 153-172.

Birds are a key environmental asset and this is recognised through comprehensive legislation and policy ensuring their protection and conservation. Many species are active at night and surveys are required to understand the implications of proposed developments such as towers and reduce possible conflicts with these structures. Night vision devices are commonly used in nocturnal surveys, either to scope an area for bird numbers and activity, or in remotely sensing an area to determine potential risk. This thesis explores some practical and theoretical approaches that can improve the accuracy, confidence and efficiency of nocturnal bird surveillance. As image intensifiers and thermal imagers have operational differences, each device has associated strengths and limitations. Empirical work established that image intensifiers are best used for species identification of birds against the ground or vegetation. Thermal imagers perform best in detection tasks and monitoring bird airspace usage. The typically used approach of viewing bird survey video from remote sensing in its entirety is a slow, inaccurate and inefficient approach. Accuracy can be significantly improved by viewing the survey video at half the playback speed. Motion detection efficiency and accuracy can be greatly improved through the use of adaptive background subtraction and cumulative image differencing. An experienced ornithologist uses bird flight style and wing oscillations to identify bird species. Changes in wing oscillations can be represented in a single inter-frame similarity matrix through area-based differencing. Bird species classification can then be automated using singular value decomposition to reduce the matrices to one-dimensional vectors for training a feed-forward neural network.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Melbourne, 1978. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 265-279).

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Thesis (DPhil (Zoology))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Zoology and Entomology / unrestricted