Landbird community monitoring at Fort Frederica National Monument: 2014 data summary
Byrne MW and Kurimo-Beechuk EA. 2016. Landbird community monitoring at Fort Frederica National Monument: 2014 data summary. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/SECN/NRDS—2016/1058. 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, the responses of these community characteristics to various management actions (e.g., fire, invasive-species treatments), natural disturbances, and other stressors will improve our understanding of their effects 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 Fort Frederica National Monument in 2014. • Automated recording devices collected bird detection/non-detection data (i.e., presence/absence) from eight spatially balanced random locations at the monument. • Approximately 480 minutes of recordings were collected May–June, to represent a closed population, and were evaluated for the presence of vocalizing birds. • Fifty-one native species of birds were detected during the sampling effort. • Monitoring efforts provided the first documented occurrences of ten new species at the monument and additions to the official species list: Acadian flycatcher, least tern, marsh wren, northern rough-winged swallow, ovenbird, painted bunting, pine warbler, red-tailed hawk, song sparrow, and yellow-throated warbler. • One non-native species, the house finch, was detected during the sampling effort. • The brown-headed cowbird, Carolina wren, fish crow, great-crested flycatcher, mourning dove, northern cardinal, northern parula, pine warbler, red-bellied woodpecker, and tufted titmouse were detected at all sampling locations, and were the most widely distributed species in the monument. • 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
- Byrne, Michael; Kurimo-Beechuk, Elizabeth
- Date of Issue
- 2016-09
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- FOFR , NRSS , SECN
- Keywords
- Landbird Monitoring