Use of Captive Bred Passerines to Monitor Human Disturbance Using Corticosterone Metabolites

Given that human-wildlife conflicts are an everyday issue, we propose the use of captive bred birds to determine the effects that environmental acoustic disturbance may have on small passerines. We used greenfinches and located them at three rural and one urban site and collected faeces to measure corticosterone metabolites using enzyme immunoassays. We found that birds at the urban site excreted higher amounts of corticosterone metabolites than those at the natural sites, but that some natural sites also had high levels of corticosterone when noise levels were high. We conclude that captive bred individuals can be used to monitor sites where there may be possible effects of disturbance on wild individuals.