Landbird community monitoring at Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area: 2011 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 Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area (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 resources at the recreation area. This report summarizes data collected during implementation of the SECN landbird community monitoring protocol (Byrne et al. 2014) at Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area in 2011. 1. Automated recording devices collected bird detection/ non-detection data from 30 spatially balanced random locations within the recreation area. 2. Approximately 1,400 minutes of recordings were collected March–May and were evaluated to detect the presence of vocalizing birds. 3. Fifty-six species of birds were detected during the sampling effort. 4. Tufted titmouse, northern cardinal, blue jay, and Carolina wren were the most frequently occurring and widely distributed species (i.e., occurring at 90% or more of all sampling locations). Red-bellied woodpecker, American crow, American goldfinch, and downy woodpecker were also widely distributed across the recreation area, occurring at over 80% of the sampling locations. 5. Two non-native species, European starling and house finch, were detected during the sampling effort. 6. Tufted titmouse, northern Cardinal, eastern wood-pewee, willow flycatcher, and yellow-throated vireo represent new detections and will be added to the official species list for the recreation area. 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 Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area: 2011 data summary

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