Hello, I am student of applied ecology on university in Czech Republic and I am working on a thesis about using small hole-nesting passerines as a natural biological pest control in forests. By pest I mean mainly insects eating leaves on deciduous and coniferous trees (Pristiphora sp., Cephalcia sp., Euproctis sp. and so on) - the concept of biological control is based on placing dozens/hundreds of nestboxes in appropriate enviroment combined with winter feeding of birds and regular maintenance and evaluation through the time (long story short..). The thesis output should be simple metodology ("user manual") allowing practical aplication even for a non-ornitologist (recommendations for density of the nestboxes in relation to biotope, regular manitenance and expanding, how to do the evaluation...).
I respect your experience with ornitology in your country, do you have any metodology or basicaly any more complex source covering this topic? Or someone with practical experience?
(I've crawled through Google and scientific sites like Scopus, there are some papers from all around the world... but it looks like they are usually more scientific studies than a regular (practical) application of biological control. I can use father's life-work (he has more than 30 years of experience and a data from a thousands of nestboxes) and my personal humble knowledge, but I would like to compare our results and recomendations with others.)
Thank you for any recommendations! Regards, Miroslav