Landbird community monitoring at Fort Sumter National Monument: 2012 data summary

Kurimo-Beechuk, Elizabeth; Byrne, Michael

doi:10.36967/2228028

Birds are an important component of park ecosystems. Due to their high body temperature, rapid metabolism, and high ecological position in most food webs, birds are also good indicators of the effects of local and regional ecosystem changes. Patterns in the community composition, distribution, and occurrence of breeding birds provide a metric for assessing ecological integrity and sustainability in southeastern U.S. ecosystems. Further, trends in these attributes in relation to activities occurring at Fort Sumter National Monument (e.g., management actions, natural disturbance, invasive-species treatment) will improve our understanding of the effects of various management actions and other stressors on the condition of monument resources. This report summarizes data collected during implementation of the SECN landbird community monitoring protocol (Byrne et al. 2014) at Fort Sumter National Monument in 2012. 1. Automated recording devices collected bird detection/ non-detection data from four spatially balanced random locations within the monument. 2. Approximately 80 minutes of recordings were collected in May and June, to represent a closed population, and were evaluated to detect the presence of vocalizing birds. 3. Thirty-three species of birds were detected during the sampling effort. 4. Carolina wren, house finch, and northern cardinal were the most frequently occurring and widely distributed species (i.e., occurring at all sampling locations). Blue jay, brown thrasher, Carolina chickadee, chimney swift, fish crow, mourning dove, northern mockingbird, purple martin, and red-winged blackbird were also widely distributed across the monument, occurring at 75% of all sampling locations. 5. Two non-native species, house finch and house sparrow, were detected during the sampling effort. 6. Blue-gray gnatcatcher, great crested flycatcher, and orchard oriole represent new detections and will be added to the monument species list. 7. The full dataset, and associated metadata, can be acquired from the NPS data store at the Integrated Resource Management Applications portal (https://irma. nps.gov/App/Portal/Home).

Landbird community monitoring at Fort Sumter National Monument: 2012 data summary

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