. The Canadian field-naturalist. 1999 Boutin, Freemark, and Kirk: Bird Use of Farmland 431 environmental change (Furness and Greenwood 1993), and for guiding management decisions in agriculture that may affect avian biodiversity (McLaughlin and Mineau 1995; Mineau and McLaughlin 1996). As such, this represents the first summary of bird use of cropland in southern Ontario (but see Jobin et al. 1998, for southern Quebec); an early study by Speirs and Orenstein (1967) focused on grassland. In this paper, we describe spatial and temporal patterns of bird use of farmlands in southern Ontario over a
. The Canadian field-naturalist. 1999 Boutin, Freemark, and Kirk: Bird Use of Farmland 431 environmental change (Furness and Greenwood 1993), and for guiding management decisions in agriculture that may affect avian biodiversity (McLaughlin and Mineau 1995; Mineau and McLaughlin 1996). As such, this represents the first summary of bird use of cropland in southern Ontario (but see Jobin et al. 1998, for southern Quebec); an early study by Speirs and Orenstein (1967) focused on grassland. In this paper, we describe spatial and temporal patterns of bird use of farmlands in southern Ontario over a two-year period. One unique aspect of our study is that we document intensively bird use of cropland over the course of both the breeding and part of the migration season; previous studies in North America ( Best et al. 1990) combined data over the breeding season. Specifically, our goal in this paper is (1) to document the species using four types of crops and their immediate edges in southern Ontario during the breeding and migrating seasons, and (2) to ascertain the between- and within- year pattern of crop use by birds. Methods Study areas and crop types We selected four crop types for assessment of avian use in three counties in southern Ontario (Figure 1). Com (for silage) was chosen because it was common to all three counties, had a high acreage (total county acreage 24 019 ha in Essex, 35 759 ha in Norfolk and 15 070 ha in Niagara; Statistics Canada 1987) and it had regular pesticide applications (see Boutin et al. 1996; Boutin et al. in press). A second crop with a large acreage and known to have frequent or intensive management, particularly pesticide use, was selected in each coun- ty. For Essex County the crop was soybeans (total acreage 60 781 ha), for Haldimand-Norfolk County (hereafter Norfolk), apple orchards (1378 ha) and for Niagara County, grape vineyards (7332 ha). The total acreage for these four crops in southern Ontario was 452 041 ha (corn), 320 29
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