Apparent Changes in Abundance and Distribution of Birds in Denali National Park and Preserve

McIntyre, Carol

Charles Sheldon, Olaus Murie, Adolph Murie, and Joseph Dixon made observations of the bird life in the Denali National Park (Denali) region from 1906 to 1962 and reported their observations in various articles, books, and field notes. While Sheldon provided the first descriptions of this region’s bird life, Joseph Dixon and Adolph Murie provided the most comprehensive descriptions of the region’s bird life. To identify possible changes in Denali’s bird life over the last century, I compared historic bird observations made by Joseph Dixon and Adolph Murie with concontemporary bird observations made between 2001 and 2006 through several long-term monitoring programs in Denali and by long time Denali naturalists. My preliminary comparisons suggest that distribution and abundance of many species has changed within the last century. For instance, Dixon and Murie considered whimbrels as common and regular breeders in areas now dissected by the Denali Park road, but we rarely encountered whimbrels within 0.5 mile of the Denali Park road in the last 10 years. Further, Dixon and Murie rarely encountered orange-crowned warblers during the breeding season in Denali, but they were one of the most common species encountered on our standardized bird surveys in the last decade. Although direct comparisons between historic and contemporary observations are impossible due to methodological differences, my preliminary investigations suggest that historic observations are valuable for identifying apparent changes, building hypotheses to explore cause of change, and planning future studies of Denali’s birdlife.