Landbird community monitoring at Ocmulgee National Monument: 2014 data summary

Kurimo-Beechuk, Elizabeth; Byrne, Michael

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 Ocmulgee 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 Ocmulgee National Monument in 2014. 1. Automated recording devices collected bird detection/ non-detection data (i.e., presence/absence) from 20 spatially balanced random locations at the monument. 2. Approximately 1,200 minutes of recordings were collected May–June, to represent a closed population, and were evaluated to detect the presence of vocalizing birds. 3. Seventy species of birds were detected, including two non-native species: house finch and house sparrow. 4. Monitoring efforts resulted in the addition of a new species to the official species list for the monument: willow flycatcher. 5. Results suggest that bird species richness is high at the monument. 6. Blue-gray gnatcatcher, Carolina wren, northern cardinal, red-bellied woodpecker, and tufted titmouse were the most frequently occurring and widely distributed species (i.e., occurring at all sampling locations). Blue jay, eastern towhee, great-crested flycatcher, red-eyed vireo, brown-headed cowbird, Carolina chickadee, summer tanager, and white-eyed vireo were also widely distributed across the monument, occurring at 90–95% of sampling locations. 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 Ocmulgee National Monument: 2014 data summary

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