An Integrated Population Model from Constant Effort Bird-Ringing Data

Data from the British Trust for Ornithology’s Constant Effort Scheme, an an-nual bird-ringing programme in which catch effort is standardised, are routinely used to index abundance, productivity and adult survival. Efficient models have been developed for each. Such a monitoring scheme, based on ringing across a number of sites, is perhaps unique in providing this combination of demographic information and makes the data particularly amenable to an integrated approach to population modelling. We develop a Bayesian approach and a deterministic pop-ulation model uniting abundance, productivity and survival. The method is applied to Constant Effort Site data for Sedge Warblers Acrocephalus schoenobaenus. The possibility of “transient ” birds needs to be incorporated within the model and we demonstrate how the current methodology can be efficiently extended to use dat