Gulf Islands National Seashore

Bird Monitoring

The GULN has implemented two bird monitoring methodologies intended to monitor breeding birds and non-breeding wintering birds. These methods utlize a ramdom point count, fixed-duration, time and distance-based technique. GUIS has two districts, one in the Florida (Naval Live Oaks, Perdido Key, Santa Rosa Island, Fort Pickens, Fort Barrancas) and one in Mississippi (Davis Bayou, and the Mississippi Barrier Islands). The Florida district has 48 randomly distributed survey points broken into four panals that cover all of the areas. The Mississippi district-Davis Bayou has 16 points broken into 2 panels and the barrier Islands have 24 points broken into 2 panals.

Breeding bird surveys occur between May 15 and June 15. At the first detection of each individual bird, observers record species identity, the time within 1-minute intervals for 10 minutes, and record an estimated distance within four distance annuli (0 � <25 m, 25 - <50 m, 50 - <100 m, and >100 m). This data has been entered into the USGS Point Count Database and is accessible at http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/point/

Wintering birds surveysoccur between November 15 and February 15. At first detection of each indiviedual bird, observers record species, time within 2-minute intervals for 20 minutes, and an esimated distance within three distance annuli (>50m, <50m, flyovers). Methodology was developed Dan Twedt, USGS, and documented in the GULN Avian Monitoring Plan. These data have been entered into the GULN Bird Monitoring Database in Access 2003 format. Data are availble by contacting the network data manager.