Monitoring Trends of Passerine Birds in Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska: 2005 Progress Report

McIntyre, Carol

We sampled 261 points on 11 minigrids using 10-minute point transect surveys during the CAKN passerine monitoring project in Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska, in 2005. All surveys were conducted between 1 and 27 June between 0300 and 0930 hours. We detected 4,149 birds, including 219 to 573 birds per minigrid and 10.4 to 22.9 birds per point. We detected 17 to 32 species per minigrid and 4.5 to 9.4 species per point. The most species (n = 32) were detected on the Birch Lower minigrid and the least species (n = 17) on the Muldrow minigrid. Most detections were of singing (75.7%) or calling (8.7%) birds. Less than 1% of all detections were made in the 0 - 10 meter distance interval. Approximately 54% of all detections were 150 meters from the observer. We detected 86 species on minigrids including 63 species on the 10-minute counts and 23 species on the minigrids but not during the counts. Passerine birds were the most commonly detected species group and made up 94.7% of all detections. White-crowned Sparrow was the most commonly detected species (n = 781 detections). We detected White-crowned Sparrows on 82% of all points ( x = 19.4 points per minigrid, SD = 7.9) including 7 to 135 White-crowned Sparrows per minigrid ( x = 70.8, SD = 42.7) and 1 to 10 White-crowned Sparrows per point ( x = 2.98, SD = 2.38). We’ll conduct 10-minute point transect surveys on eight foot accessible minigrids in 2006. We’ll also conduct two weekly roadside surveys using Breeding Bird Survey methodology (3-minute counts with no distance sampling) from late April through early July to monitor phenology of singing.

Monitoring Trends of Passerine Birds in Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska: 2005 Progress Report

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