Environ Ecol Stat (2008) 15:49–58 DOI 10.1007/s10651-007-0038-8 Bayesian estimation of age-specific bird nest survival rates with categorical covariates Jing Cao · Chong Z. He · Timothy D. McCoy Received: 1 August 2005 / Revised: 7 July 2006 / Published online: 15 September 2007 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007 Abstract The populations of many North American landbirds are showing signs of declin- ing. Gathering information on breeding productivity allows critical assessment of population performance and helps identify good habitat-management practices. He (Biometrics (2003) 59 962–973) proposed a Bayesian model to estimate the age-specific nest survival rates. The model allows irregular visiting schedule under the assumption that the observed nests have homogeneous nest survival. Because nest survival studies are often conducted in different sites and time periods, it is not realistic to assume homogeneous nest survival. In this paper, we extend He’s model by incorporating these factors as categorical covariates. The simula- tion results show that the Bayesian hierarchical model can produce satisfactory estimates on nest survival and capture different factor effects. Finally the model is applied to a Missouri red-winged blackbird data set. Keywords Bird nest survival · Age-specific survival rate · Bayesian estimation · Hierarchical model · Noninformative prior 1 Introduction In a typical nest survival study, investigators periodically search for active nests in a marked area and revisit them until they have failed (destroyed or abandoned) or succeeded (at least one egg hatches or one baby bird fledges, as defined in the study). Note that nests that failed before they would be discovered are not included in the data. J. Cao (B ) Department of Statistical Science, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA e-mail: jcao@smu.edu C. Z. He Department of Statistics, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, MO, USA T. D. McCoy Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, Lincoln, NE, USA 123