00:06Today we're here at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park's biodiversity preserve with USGS and the
00:14Nature Reserve of Orange County monitoring and banding cactus wrens. Cactus wrens are a California
00:21species of special concern and their populations were very hard hit after the recent fires and so
00:29we're trying to monitor their population and see what we can do to bring their populations back up.
00:37Cactus wrens are really closely tied to cactus they use year-round nests for roosting and for
00:45breeding and they need cactus that is at least one meter which is around three feet in height they
00:53tend to prefer these larger cactus patches for breeding. What we were doing today was
00:59attempting to capture some adult wrens to collect genetic samples so we observed the birds for a
01:06while in the morning became familiar with their flight paths and the way that they
01:10moved around their territory and then strategically placed some mist nets in an area that they were
01:16likely to fly through. We actually caught a male and two fledglings this morning placed metal and
01:27colored bands on their legs which give each bird a unique color combination so that we can recognize
01:33individuals in the future. We perform various measurements on them we measure wing length we record
01:43some other characteristics we weigh them and then we clip one of their toenails to collect a tiny amount
01:50of blood and this is the basis for the genetics analysis. So ultimately we'll be using the results
01:58of the genetic study to look at how connected these dispersed cactus run populations are and we'll be able
02:05to determine if birds are moving from one patch to another and how they're doing that in other words
02:11what routes they're taking and what kinds of habitat they need connecting patches of cactus for birds to be able
02:18to move from one to the other. The San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research is involved in a
02:28restoration project for coastal sage scrub and within that project we're trying to figure out how that
02:36restoration effort is affecting hopefully positively the cactus run population. So we're out planting cactus
02:45and monitoring the cactus run population to see how their populations are doing at the same time.
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