North Coast and Cascades Network landbird monitoring: Report for the 2023 field season

Abstract

The North Coast and Cascades Network (NCCN) continued to implement the network?s Landbird Monitoring Protocol in 2023, 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 five alternating panels) for the past 16 years (2007?2023), except for 2017 when data collection was temporarily suspended to reallocate resources for a 5-year data synthesis. In 2023, we conducted surveys at 1,174 point count stations along 68 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); and 54 point counts at San Juan Island National Historical Park (SAJH). Lewis and Clark National Historical Park (LEWI) was not surveyed in 2023 as SAJH and LEWI are surveyed in alternating years. Across the three large parks, we documented the presence of 158 species, 100 of which were detected during point counts. The remaining 58 species were recorded only as incidental detections or on ?Rare Bird Report Forms.? For the most frequently detected species over the 2005?2023 field seasons, we present the total number of detections of each species on each park?s annual panel transects over that period of time. The number of bird detections on annual-panel transects across all three large parks increased by 2,239 between 2022 and 2023. When factoring in the number of point counts conducted each year, all three parks saw an increase in the average number of birds per count (an increase of 17% at MORA, 42% at OLYM, and 21% at NOCA). This overall increase in detections across the network is in part due to a high number of Red Crossbill detections in 2023, particularly at OLYM. We detected them at higher numbers in OLYM than any other year since the start of the monitoring program. Several other species (Red-breasted Nuthatch, Townsend?s/Hermit Warbler, American Robin, and Hammond?s Flycatcher) were also detected in higher numbers in the three large parks in 2023 than in 2022, which contributed to the overall increase in detections. Despite these changes, overall detection numbers of most species across the parks were not markedly different between the two years. We caution 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.