Streamside bird monitoring protocol for the Eastern Rivers and Mountains Network: Protocol narrative version 3.0

Marshall, Mathew; Tzilkowski, Caleb; Callahan, Kristina

The National Park Service has initiated a long-term ecological monitoring program known as “Vital Signs Monitoring” to provide the minimum infrastructure to allow more than 270 national park system units to identify and implement long-term monitoring of their highest-priority indicators of resource condition. This protocol outlines the justification and procedures for streamside bird monitoring within the Eastern Rivers and Mountains Network – one of 32 ecoregional “networks” of parks that were grouped by geography and shared natural resource characteristics. “Streamside bird” refers to the breeding bird community surrounding streams. The area sampled in this protocol is along park streams that are typically forested including a closed canopy over the stream. Therefore, the “streamside” bird community sampled is synonymous with what other monitoring programs refer to as “forest birds”, “breeding birds”, and “landbirds”. The important difference, and the purpose of including the term “streamside”, is not the bird community per se, rather that the physical area sampled (and area of inference) is limited to the land area surrounding streams in each park. Preserving the condition of park resources, including streamside birds, unimpaired in perpetuity is the fundamental management objective of the National Park Service. Indeed, this “anti-degradation” or “no decline in condition” management objective captures the essence of the NPS mission and forms the underpinnings of the National Park Service ecological monitoring program. The purpose of the streamside bird monitoring protocol is to collect and analyze data and report information that will help park management maintain or improve the ecological condition of the streamside bird community. Primary monitoring objectives of the streamside bird monitoring protocol are to: 1. estimate status and trends in occupancy, density, and other indices of abundance for bird species along wadeable streams; 2. estimate status and trends in a measure of biotic integrity (i.e., the Bird Community Index) for bird communities along wadeable streams; and 3. compare these trends in condition, occupancy, density, and other indices of abundance to regional and continental trends. Point count surveys are the most widely used quantitative method of monitoring bird populations and are used for this protocol as well. The survey technique involves using a standardized methodology to record (“count”) all birds seen or heard during a fixed amount of time at count locations (“points”). The resultant counts are used as an index of population abundance and these data can be used to estimate abundance, density, and occupancy.

Streamside bird monitoring protocol for the Eastern Rivers and Mountains Network: Protocol narrative version 3.0

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