North Coast and Cascades Network landbird monitoring: Report for the 2019 field season

Holmgren, Amanda; Wilkerson, Robert; Siegel, Rodney; Ransom, Jason

In 2019 the North Coast and Cascades Network (NCCN) continued to implement the Network’s Landbird Monitoring Protocol, in partnership with The Institute for Bird Populations. The protocol was initially field-tested with data collected from the annual panel only as part of protocol development during 2005–2006, and has subsequently been implemented fully (including data collection on the annual panel as well as all of the five alternating panels) for the past 12 years (2007–2019), except for 2017 when data collection was temporarily suspended to reallocate resources for a 5-year data synthesis. In 2019 we conducted 1,108 point counts at point count survey stations along 67 transects in the large wilderness parks of the NCCN, including Mount Rainier National Park (MORA), North Cascades National Park Complex (NOCA), and Olympic National Park (OLYM). Across the three large parks, we documented the presence of 132 species, 90 of which were detected during point counts. For 57 species (all species for which we amassed at least 77 point count detections over the period 2005–2019), we present the total number of detections of each species on each park’s annual panel transects during the 2005–2019 field seasons. We caution, however, that these detection totals have not been adjusted for differences in survey effort, observer effects, or potential differences in detectability of birds between years; such adjustments will be made in conjunction with trend analyses in a future multi-year report. We also conducted 73 point counts at Lewis and Clark National Historical Park (LEWI), including 36 at Cape Disappointment, 29 at Fort Clatsop, five at Sunset Beach, and three at Yeon. At LEWI our field crew detected 77 species, 64 of which were detected during point counts. We present the number of detections, and the number of points with detections, for each species detected during point counts at LEWI. The number of bird detections on annual-panel transects across all three large parks decreased by 430 between 2018 and 2019, though the magnitude and direction of the change in detections varied substantially among the parks. At OLYM there was an increase of 177 detections on annual-panel transects, at MORA there was a decrease of 391 detections on annual-panel transects. At both parks, the number of point counts conducted changed little between the two years. At NOCA there was a decrease of 216 detections on annual-panel transects, but because there were fewer point counts conducted there in 2019 than in 2018, the average number of bird detections per point between the two years actually changed very little. Many species were detected in slightly or moderately greater numbers in the three large parks in 2019 than in previous years. A few of these species include olive-sided flycatcher, Cassin’s vireo, song sparrow, Nashville warbler, and Wilson’s warbler. Each of these species had more detections in 2019 than in any of the previous 13 years. Interpretation of these results will be completed as part of the next multi-year trend analysis, which will account for annual variation in survey effort, observer effects, and detection probability.

North Coast and Cascades Network landbird monitoring: Report for the 2019 field season

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