Landbird community monitoring at Cumberland Island National Seashore: 2012 data summary
Kurimo-Beechuk EA and Byrne M. 2016. Landbird community monitoring at Cumberland Island National Seashore: 2012 data summary. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/SECN/NRDS—2016/1011. National Park Service, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science. Fort Collins, Colorado. https://doi.org/10.36967/2228030
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 Cumberland Island National Seashore (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 seashore resources. This report summarizes data collected during implementation of the SECN landbird community monitoring protocol (Byrne et al. 2014) at Cumberland Island National Seashore in 2012. 1. Automated recording devices collected bird detection/ non-detection data (i.e., presence/absence) from 30 out of 31 spatially balanced random locations at the seashore. 2. Approximately 1,700 minutes of recordings were collected May–June, to represent a closed population, and were evaluated to detect the presence of vocalizing birds. 3. Fifty-five species of birds were detected during the sampling effort. 4. Northern cardinal, Carolina wren, white-eyed vireo, blue-gray gnatcatcher, northern parula, and tufted titmouse were the most frequently occurring and widely distributed species (i.e., occurring at 90% or more of all sampling locations). Yellow-throated warbler, redbellied woodpecker, and summer tanager were also widely distributed across the seashore, occurring at 80% or more of all sampling locations. 5. One non-native species, house finch, was detected during the sampling effort. 6. 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).
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Kurimo-Beechuk, Elizabeth; Byrne, Michael
- Date of Issue
- 2016-03
- Publisher
- National Park Service, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science
- DOI
- 10.36967/2228030
- Units
- CUIS , NRSS , SECN
- Keywords
- Birds, Distance estimation, Distribution, landbird monitoring, Monitoring, variable-circular plots