Landbird community monitoring at Congaree National Park: 2014 data summary
Byrne MW and Kurimo-Beechuk EA. 2016. Landbird community monitoring at Congaree National Park: 2014 data summary. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/SECN/NRDS—2016/1057. 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 Congaree National 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 monument resources. This report summarizes data collected during implementation of the SECN landbird community monitoring protocol (Byrne et al. 2014) at Congaree National Park in 2014. • Automated recording devices collected bird detection/non-detection data (i.e., presence/absence) from 20 spatially balanced random locations at the park. • Approximately 1,200 minutes of recordings were collected from March–June, to represent a closed population, and were evaluated for the presence of vocalizing birds. • Fifty-five bird species were detected, including one non-native species, the European starling. • Monitoring efforts provided the first documented occurrences of one new species at the park and an addition to the official species list: northern flicker (Colaptes auratus). • Results suggest that species richness of birds is moderate to high at the park. • Acadian flycatcher, Carolina wren, northern cardinal, northern parula, pileated woodpecker, red-bellied woodpecker, red-eyed vireo, and tufted titmouse were the most frequently occurring and widely distributed species at the park, occurring at all of the 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
- CONG , NRSS , SECN
- Keywords
- Landbird Monitoring