Landbird community monitoring at Horseshoe Bend National Military Park: 2011 data summary
Kurimo-Beechuk EA and Byrne M. 2016. Landbird community monitoring at Horseshoe Bend National Military Park: 2011 data summary. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/SECN/NRDS—2016/1019. National Park Service, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science. Fort Collins, Colorado
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 Horseshoe Bend National Military Park (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 park resources. This report summarizes data collected during implementation of the SECN landbird community monitoring protocol (Byrne et al. 2014) at Horseshoe Bend National Military Park in 2011. 1. Automated recording devices collected bird detection/ non-detection data from from 25 of the 30 spatially balanced random locations within the park. 2. Approximately 1,100 minutes of recordings were collected March–May and were evaluated to detect the presence of vocalizing birds. 3. Forty-nine species of birds were detected during the sampling effort. 4. Monitoring efforts resulted in the addition of two new species to the official species list for the park: cerulean warbler and red-breasted nuthatch. 5. American crow, red-eyed vireo, tufted titmouse, and northern parula were the most frequently occurring and widely distributed species (i.e., occurring at over 80% of the sampling locations). Blue jay, northern cardinal, pine warbler, and red-bellied woodpecker were also widely distributed across the park, occurring at over 60% of the sampling locations. 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
- 2016-05
- Publisher
- National Park Service, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science
- Units
- HOBE , NRSS , SECN
- Keywords
- Birds, Distance estimation, Distribution, landbird monitoring, Monitoring, variable-circular plots