Michael W. Hook

Mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) are among the most abundant and harvested game birds in North America. As such, their population abundance and vital rates are annually monitored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in cooperation with state agencies. Current monitoring indicates a decline in absolute abundance across a large portion of its range in the United States, raising concerns. One theory for this apparent decline is problems with the data used to estimate these vital rates: specifically, biases in the data collection methods (including banding programs) not being...