The importance of white-winged doves to hunter’s in Texas is considerable. White-winged doves in Texas provided an estimated 500,000 hunter days of opportunity, with a resulting harvest of approximately 1.5 million birds. Currently, Texas represents the primary continental United States range of the Eastern, Mexican Highland, Upper Big Bend, and Western breeding populations of white-winged doves. In the 1980’s, white-winged doves were confined to northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Recently, however, white-winged doves have experienced a range expansion in Texas, with white-winged doves currently breeding in 196 counties versus <10 in 1980 and only 16% of the white-winged dove breeding population in Texas occurs in the historic breeding sites in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV). Outside the historic range, white-winged doves are most often found in urban environments, which has unknown impacts on reproduction, survival, and harvest.
In 2007, Dr. Bret Collier, Research Ecologist at Texas A&M University began a collaborative study with Texas Parks and Wildlife to measure white-winged dove survival and harvest to assist Texas Parks and Wildlife to improve population management strategies for white-winged doves. In 2007, students from Texas A&M University, and Texas Parks and Wildlife biologists around the state began to band white-winged dove across the state of Texas. The procedure for banding white-winged doves include placing small aluminum bands, each engraved with a unique identification numbers, on a leg of each captured dove. We capture doves using walk-in traps baited with a mixture of chicken scratch and black oil sunflower seeds.
Currently, Texas A&M University and Texas Parks and Wildlife and personnel intend to band more than 10,000 individuals (juveniles and adults combined) yearly for the next five years throughout Texas. During the 2007 banding season, over 11,000 white-winged doves were banded in Texas, and the 2008 season produced more than 20,000 individual birds banded!
During 2008, Texas A&M University had a crew of four undergraduate Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences students from Texas A&M University: Kirby Calhoun, James Paige II, Mike Tiller, and Jimmy Tillman as well as a post-doctoral research associate, Dr. Jerrod Butcher, leading the A&M side of the dove banding charge throughout the state. Their banding efforts in Harris, McLennan, Dallas, Tarrant, Denton, Bell, Jim Wells, Taylor, and Duval Counties produced more than 7,500 white-wing birds banded, reaching 75% of the state quota of 10,000 alone. The Texas A&M staff are extremely pleased and excited about the accomplishments of their undergraduate students.
For 2009, James Page II and Chris Page will be leading banding efforts throughout Texas, with former undergraduate student Kirby Calhoun beginning his first year of graduate research at Texas A&M focused on estimating reproductive rates, breeding season survival rates, and harvest distributions of urban banded white-winged doves in Texas. Kirby is concentrating his efforts in Alice, Texas (Jim Wells County), and as of the beginning of May has banded over 1,200 birds as part of his thesis research. The results of this study will be extremely important in estimating sustainable surplus of white-winged dove. Researchers involved in this project are excited to see the data from this initial field season, and what results will be produced!
As any hunter will know, harvesting a bird with a band on it is a trophy! However, Texas hunters should not just put the band on a lanyard or key ring with out first reporting it to the USGS Bird Banding Lab in Maryland by either calling the 1-800 number on the band or getting online. Using the data collected from bands which are reported, Bret Collier at Texas A&M University will be able to determine white-winged dove survival, harvest rate, and movements of doves banded in urban areas to areas where harvest can occur. When this information is combined with age ratio information based on wing collection stations on Texas Parks and Wildlife management areas, informed management decisions can be made to ensure proper management of white-winged doves in Texas for the future. |
