Landbird monitoring in the Northern Colorado Plateau Network: 2017 field season

Roberts, Samuel; Tymkiw, Elizabeth; Ladin, Zachary; Shriver, W.

In 2017, the University of Delaware, in cooperation the National Park Service (NPS), completed the twelfth year of a habitat-based landbird monitoring program in park units of the Northern Colorado Plateau Network. This program is designed to provide rigorous population trend data for most diurnal, regularly occurring breeding landbird species throughout the network. This population information is useful for land managers and supports the National Park Service’s goal of long-term monitoring of biological indicators for network parks. In 2017, university biologists surveyed 45 survey locations within 11 NPS units. Fifteen transects were located in each of the three habitats of interest: low-elevation riparian, pinyon-juniper, and sage shrubland. Each location was surveyed once. In addition to the habitat-based surveys, four point counts and an area search were conducted at Pipe Spring National Monument using a modified monitoring design. Over 12 years of data collection, 12,974 point-count surveys have been conducted in 11 NCPN units, detecting 166 unique species. During the 2017 field season, 660 point-count surveys were conducted, detecting 116 unique species. One new species was detected for this monitoring program: a northern waterthrush, during a low-elevation riparian transect survey in Arches National Park. This was the first record of that species for the park. In total, 113 population-density trends were estimated across the three habitats. Twenty of the estimated density trends were significant (p-value <0.05), with black-chinned humming-bird in PJ as the only significant positive trend. There were sufficient sample sizes to estimate the densities of 60 species in at least one of the three habitats surveyed. Observers estimated densities for 26 bird species of conservation or management concern throughout the Northern Colorado Plateau Network. Using a modified monitoring design, landbird monitoring surveys were conducted in Pipe Spring National Monument for the eighth year since 2009. A total of 57 individuals of 29 species were recorded. Three species not previously detected by this monitoring program were detected: Wilson’s warbler, chipping sparrow, and western meadowlark. While all three of these species have been detected within the park outside of monitoring efforts, they are rare visitors during the breeding season in this location. Sample sizes were too low for density trends to be estimated for Pipe Spring National Monument.

Landbird monitoring in the Northern Colorado Plateau Network: 2017 field season

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