Monitoring the birds of the National Park Service, Northern Colorado Plateau Network (NCPN): 2008 field season report

Giroir, Glenn

This report documents the results of the fourth year of habitat-based landbird monitoring in the Northern Colorado Plateau Network, which the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory completed in 2008. In 2005, Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory (RMBO) and the National Park Service (NPS), initiated Monitoring Birds of the National Park Service, Northern Colorado Plateau Network (NCPN), using a protocol similar to other RMBO monitoring programs as delineated by Panjabi et al. (2006). This monitoring program continued through 2008. RMBO designed the program to provide statistically rigorous long-term trend data for populations of most diurnal, regularly breeding landbird species in the NCPN. The program provides information needed to effectively manage and conserve bird populations in the NCPN, including the spatial distribution, abundance, and relationship to important habitat characteristics for each species. The program also supports the NCPN’s efforts to develop long-term natural resource monitoring plans for its park units, and contributes to RMBO’s broader landscape-scale breeding bird monitoring program, which currently includes 11 states in the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains regions.The program consists of 45 point transects (15 transects each in low-elevation riparian, pinyon-juniper, and sage shrubland habitats) within 11 different parks. Each transect is conducted two times each spring/summer. We use program DISTANCE to generate density estimates using data collected at point count stations.In 2008, we detected a total of 9,548 individual birds of 119 species on point transects. We detected 3,590 individual birds of 84 species in low-elevation riparian habitat, 2,832 individual birds of 70 species in pinyon-juniper habitat, and 3,126 individual birds of 89 species in sage shrubland habitat.In 2008, as in 2007, we pooled the 2005-2008 point transect data to determine density estimates for each year. This allowed us to calculate density estimates for some low-density species that did not have large enough sample sizes to calculate density estimates using only the 2008 data. The pooled 2005-2008 data yielded robust density estimates (CV < 50%) for 34 species and moderately robust estimates (CV = 50-75%) for 13 additional species. We should be able to reach our target of detecting a population change of at least 3% within 30 years for these 47 species, which represent 39 percent of all species detected on point transects in the NCPN during 2005-2008 and represent more than 90 percent of all individual birds observed during 2005-2008. (from Report)

Monitoring the birds of the National Park Service, Northern Colorado Plateau Network (NCPN): 2008 field season report

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