Evaluating the Framework of a New River Bird Survey Method

Abstract

AbstractRiver bird assemblages can serve as beacons of environmental change associated with restoration or degradation. River birds regularly rely on riverine resources at some point in their life cycle, vary in the scale of temporal and spatial of use and forage at multiple levels of the food web (e.g. fish, aquatic plants, aquatic or emergent insects). We present a novel river bird survey method that is more easily employed and less intrusive than riverbank transect or boat surveys and encompasses a wide suite of species and a year‐round time frame. We evaluate the relative efficacy of different levels of survey duration (20, 15, 10 or 5 min), number of surveys (every 2 weeks in spring and fall and every 3 weeks in summer and winter) and number of sites on the survey's ability to document species richness and bird abundance. We used two statistical approaches, species accumulation curves (for duration, number of surveys and number of sites) and first‐order Jackknifes (for duration). We conclude that a biweekly or triweekly survey, 25 sites in the focal river, and a survey duration of at least 15 min are sufficient to meet our objectives. This logistically efficient survey approach facilitates monitoring complex and long‐term change such as that associated with river restoration and dam removal. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.