First Observations of an Eastern Screech-Owl, <em>Megascops asio</em>, Population in an Apple-Producing Region of Southern Quebec
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Baseline information was collected on a local Eastern Screech-Owl population found in the apple-producing region of Saint-Hilaire and Rougemont, Quebec, as part of a larger study on pesticide exposure conducted between 2000 and 2003. Screech-Owls visited or occupied 41 of 89 nest boxes installed in 12 orchards and 2 control locations. The mean height of occupied nest boxes was 3.83 m (2.00 – 5.80 m). Squirrels, Sciurus and Tamiasciurius sp., and chipmunks, Tamias striatus, Northern Flickers, Colaptes auratus, and wasps were the owls’ primary competitors for the boxes. Intact Screech-Owl pellets retrieved from nest boxes (n = 82) had a mean length and width of 3.57 and 1.44 cm, respectively, and weighed a mean of 1.77 g. Screech-Owls in the study area consumed a variety of small mammal, avian, insect and aquatic prey. Of these, Meadow Voles, Microtus pennsylvanicus, were the predominant prey item identified in pellets, and Mourning Doves, Zenaida macroura, were the primary avian prey found in nest boxes. In Canada, the owl’s trend status remains largely unknown. The species is currently listed as “Not at Risk”, based on an assessment conducted for COSEWIC in 1986. Given that a limited amount of information exists on the natural history and ecology of the species in Quebec, we also generated a map of the owl’s distribution in the province, using data from ornithological databases and rehabilitation facilities. Potential risks to the species within the province, particularly pesticide exposure and habitat loss, are briefly addressed and follow-up studies are discussed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".