Bird Monitoring

Parks: All MIDN parks

Vital signs:

Breeding birds

Justification:

Avian species in the mid-Atlantic region face numerous habitat threats including urbanization, conversion to agriculture, and fragmentation. National parks provide refuge from such threats, containing contiguous tracts of various habitat types such as forests, wetlands, and grasslands, that are suitable for breeding birds. Many of the network parks have bird species that are declining throughout their range (Keller et al. 2000, Root and Weckstein 1995), emphasizing the need for understanding their status and trends.

Monitoring landbirds (species that occupy terrestrial habitats) will not only provide insights into the long-term trends of avian species composition and relative abundance, but will also provide a measure for assessing ecological integrity. Neotropical-migratory songbirds (i.e., warblers, tanagers, and vireos) are sensitive to habitat fragmentation (Yahner 1995) and, hence, are excellent barometers of environmental change or degradation. Birds are good indicators of local and regional ecosystem changes because of their high body temperature, rapid metabolism, and prominent position in most food webs. Detecting early changes in bird population trends may help us identify stressors such as invasive species, fragmentation, and management practices that will help guide future management actions.