For my research project, I am studying the feeding behavior or chickadees. I first became interested in this topic as chickadees would come ‘dive’ at me during my walks at the bird sanctuary, when I did not have food, or even stand to look like I was offering any. I thought perhaps the human feeding patterns were causing them to be more aggressive, but I then noticed that when nuthatches were also there vying for food, the chickadees displayed this behavior. This brought me to my current hypothesis ‘If nuthatches are present, chickadees exhibit more aggressive behavior in obtaining food from humans.’ For my data collection, I used systematic sampling of chickadee behavior and counted the amount of times they dove at me, and how many nuthatches were present. I did this every 50m, up to 200m along the main pathway where I see the most chickadees at this park.
While I did get some good sample behavior, I also had chickadees dive at me even after the nuthatches seemed to have disappeared, but only up unto a certain point. I think that random sampling of this behavior at different areas throughout the park could also be very interesting. I think it would be worth noting their behavior in the presence of other bird species as well, as the spring comes, and more and more birds migrate back to this area. Going forward, I would like to continue my point count stations, but I need to decide if I would like to continue the systematic sampling, and maybe add more count station points along the route at a greater distance, or if random sampling would be more strategic and provide more genuine results. It could have been that this area is where chickadees are more used to being fed, so they are more ‘aggressive’ in nature along this pathway in general. Adding in more distance to the initial pathway could be a good way to add more clarity, or picking random plots around the park to see if the behavior is different in areas that see less human traffic/feeding. It is not a significantly large park, so this may not make a big difference. There is also construction going on at the sanctuary to connect the lagoon to the river and increase water flow to the stagnant lagoon, so this noise might deter birds from certain areas, and skew the results.
It sounds like your sampling is going well. I think either sampling strategy could work, you probably want to decide before you get too far into your sampling. One potential issue with random sampling is whether you would get enough areas with human feeding.