Data from: Historic and contemporary use of catfish aquaculture by piscivorous birds in the Mississippi Delta

<p>This dataset contains data used in the manuscript "Historic and contemporary use of catfish aquaculture by piscivorous birds in the Mississippi Delta", published in The Condor: Ornithological Applications. All data were collected in northwest Mississippi during winters (October - April) of 2000-2001, 2003-2004, 2015-2016, 2016-2017, and 2017-2018. Two primary types of data are present: 1) roost surveys, and 2) aquaculture cluster surveys. Roost surveys were aerial surveys in which all known double-crested cormorant night roosts in northwest Mississippi were surveyed and cormorants were counted. Roost survey data can be found in the "Cormorant_Roost_Survey_Counts.xlxs" file. For the aquaculture cluster surveys, clusters were defined as U.S. Geological Survey land survey sections that contained aquaculture. For each year of data, a random subset of these clusters were chosen to be aerial surveyed and double-crested cormorants, great blue herons, and great egrets were recorded per cluster. Basic descriptive statistics of the clusters can be found in the "Cluster_Descriptive_Stats.xlxs" file. The "Historic_vs_Contemporary_Cormorants.xlxs" file was used to compare cormorant density on aquaculture clusters between the historic period (2000-2001, 2003-2004) and contemporary period (2015-2016, 2016-2017, and 2017-2018). Lastly, the "Cluster_Survey_Data_Contemporary.xlxs" file contains data recorded during the contemporary period only, and other variables regarding the clusters are also present.</p>