> Absolutely, resident species should be more amenable to monitoring than
> migratory ones, as range changes couldn't merely represent oversprings or
> shortfalls. On the other hand, I would say that birds are among the best
> animals to monitor, for the usual reasons of their being diurnal, large,
> conspicuous, and vocal (not to mention appealing to scientists and
> nonscientists alike), and I imagine they would respond more quickly, in
> larger jumps, to climatic changes than plants and most less vagile animals.

Good points. When I said "plants and non-migratory animals" I wasn't
excluding non-migratory birds, though I hadn't thought of the points
you mention. The rapid change bit is very important as plant communities,
especially forest communities, will change slowly.

<a lot of potential masters and phd theses deleted>

> Answers to simple questions of this sort would
> go a long way to generating hypotheses of what MIGHT happen with global
> warming, cooling, or anything else.

And, of course, the lack of such knowledge makes study of them relatively
useless in research efforts tring to measure changes due to global warming
(if any). We lack so much baseline knowledge...

> And these are only shorebird questions. The same could be asked of other
> taxonomic groups, although I feel we understand many of the other groups
> (hawks, owls, waterfowl, passerines, for example) a lot better.

A difficulty with any such research is sorting out "what's what" vs.
"what's changing" as so much wintering habitat in Central and South
America is changing at a much more rapid pace than a couple of decades
ago. This includes the Argentine Pampas, and I'm sure other habitat
types, as well of the well-publicized changes in the rainforests.

Better make those projects short-term if they're going to provide
baseline information!

-Don Baccus-