Landbird community monitoring at Canaveral National Seashore: 2014 Data Summary
Byrne MW and Kurimo-Beechuk EA. 2016. Landbird community monitoring at Canaveral National Seashore: 2014 Data Summary. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/SECN/NRDS—2016/1054. National Park Service. 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 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 Canaveral National Seashore in 2014. - Automated recording devices collected bird detection/ non-detection data (i.e., presence/absence) from 29 spatially balanced random locations at the park. - Approximately 1,700 minutes of recordings were collected from May–June, to represent a closed population, and were evaluated for the presence of vocalizing birds. - Seventy-eight native bird species were detected, including two non-native species: European starling and house finch. - Monitoring efforts provided the first documented occurrences of four new species at the park and additions to the official species list: Bicknell’s thrush, Carolina chickadee, eastern bluebird, and white-breasted nuthatch. - Results suggest that species richness of birds is high at the park. - Carolina wren, northern cardinal, eastern towhee, and red-bellied woodpecker were the most frequently occurring and widely distributed species at the park, occurring at least 93% of sampling locations. - The full dataset and metadata are available from the NPS data store at the Integrated Resource Management Applications portal (https:// irma.nps.gov/App/Portal/ Home).
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Byrne, Michael; Kurimo-Beechuk, Elizabeth
- Date of Issue
- 2016-09
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- CANA , NRSS , SECN
- Keywords
- Landbird Monitoring