Mississippi Field Station Records --

The Starkville, Mississippi, Field Station was established in 1988 when operations at the Bowling Green, Kentucky, Field Station were transferred to facilities located at Mississippi State University. Since its establishment, research at the Mississippi Field Station has focused on developing strategies to reduce bird depredations and the impacts of fish-eating birds such as American white pelicans, double-crested cormorants, great blue herons, and great egrets on aquaculture farms in the Southeastern United States. Staff at the Mississippi Field Station have conducted numerous studies on both captive and free-ranging birds to determine their local and regional population status, foraging patterns, preferred prey size, the extent of the damage they cause, and to develop effective control methods.

Beginning in the late 1980s, field trials at the Mississippi Field Station focused on evaluating nonlethal harassment and roost dispersal techniques such as the use of mannequins and inflatable effigies, pyrotechnics, helium-filled balloons, and electric fencing. Since 1990, researchers at the Mississippi Field Station have organized aerial surveys and an annual count of cormorant populations in the Mississippi Delta and other parts of the Southeast. Staff at the Mississippi Field Station have also monitored the growth of cormorant breeding colonies and analyzed cormorant banding and radio-telemetry data in an effort to learn more about population trends and migratory movements of this species.

Many of the older records in this collection were transferred to the Mississippi Field Station from the Bowling Green, Kentucky, Field Station when it closed. Records from the Kentucky Field Station focus on the development of methods to control damage to agriculture and feedlots caused by roosts of blackbirds, starlings, and grackles. Topics from these records include evaluations of the effectiveness of dispersing roosts using habitat alterations and of lethal control agents such as DRC-1399 and 4-Aminopyridine to reduce crop damage caused by blackbirds. Also included are records related to the development and evaluation of methods for applying PA-14 surfactants and other wetting agents to blackbird and starling roosts by means of water cannons, irrigation and sprinkler systems, as well as aerial applications using aircraft. Records concerning histoplasmosis in bird roosts in Kentucky and Tennessee are included as well.