Bird Communities Monitoring

Both migratory and resident birds are of monitoring interest to most GULN parks; several parks host high bird diversity owing to parks being on important migration flyways and, in some cases, being located in important over-wintering and/or breeding areas. Most network parks have high levels of visitor interest in birds and are host to variably active birding groups. The GULN program has elected that it will not pursue bird population monitoring on its parks as a network task, but will support individual park monitoring efforts with a common methodology and sampling design protocol, technical advice, and network-level data management support. To this end, we will adopt methodological and analytical components of the Heartland Network (HTLN) LandBirds Protocol and support its implementation on network parks, at the discretion of park management. To a large extent, implementation of this protocol will be done by park staff and park-associated volunteer birders.

The sampling methodology for all parks and habitats will be based on the fixed-time duration point-based “Variable Circular Plot” (VCP) sampling described in the HTLN protocol (Peitz et al 2004). VCP is a “distance sampling” methodology generally used to determine relative abundance and trends in bird populations. Sampling involves an observer recording birds seen or heard within a set time period (usually between 3 and 10 minutes) from a station located along a transect or on a systematic grid. VCP can utilize either or both visual and auditory detection of birds. Our use of this methodology will, in practice, approximate the point-count approach used for the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS), except that our application will include estimating the distance-from-observer for each bird seen or heard during the sampling event.

Link to Bird Communities Intranet page (NPS only)