Nocturnal Migration in the Tataka Area, Yushan National Park, Taiwan in Autumn 2014
Ornithol Sci 19: 135 – 144 (2020) ORIGINAL ARTICLE Nocturnal migration in the Tataka Area, Yushan National Park, Taiwan in autumn 2014 Chao-Chieh CHEN1,#, Jane-Chi WU2, Bruno Andreas WALTHER3 and Po-Jen CHIANG4 1 Department of Biomedical Science and Environmental Biology, Kaohsiung Medical University, 100, Shih- chuan 1st Rd., Sanmin District, Kaohsiung City, 807, Taiwan 2 Wild Bird Society of Pingtung County, 900, Taiwan 3 Department of Biological Sciences, National Sun Yat-sen University, Gushan District, Kaohsiung City, 804, Taiwan 4 Formosan Wild Sound Conservation Science Center Co., Ltd., 2F, 335, Yongmei Road, Yangmei District, Taoyuan City, 326, Taiwan ORNITHOLOGICAL Abstract Detecting different bird species requires different and appropriate sur- veying methods. We tested a new detection method for the Tataka Area in Yushan SCIENCE National Park, Taiwan, which is an important alpine stopover site for migratory land- © The Ornithological Society birds. Numerous migrant species have previously been reported from this area during of Japan 2020 bird counts and banding operations. However, these traditional survey methods are incapable of detecting nocturnal migrants. Therefore, we applied acoustic monitoring devices to survey the flight calls of nocturnal migrants in the Tataka Area in order to identify the species and estimate their detection rate. We set up acoustic recorders at five recording stations twice a month during September, October and November, and once in December 2014. We identified 18 nocturnal migrant taxa from 801 hours of recordings. The Black-crowned Night Heron Nycticorax nycticorax was the most frequently recorded species, followed by thrushes (Turdus spp.) and the Brown Shrike Lanius cristatus. Passages of nocturnal migrants occurred during every hour of the night, but with a significantly higher detection rate during the period from 2000 to 2300.
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