Lying in Wait for Partners in Flight: Some
Experiences Monitoring Birds in
Southeastern Bottomlands
Paul B. Hamel
Norman L. Brunswig
Michael R. Dawson
Mike Staten
Abstract—Partners in Flight stimulated a group of researchers
and managers in the Southeast to produce a guide to design and
conduct monitoring activities using point counts. Monitoring birds
in the Southeast, however, predates the appearance of Partners in
Flight. Some observers have been monitoring bird populations on
fixed study plots as part of ongoing management activities for
several years. Monitoring on the Francis Beidler Forest, a National
Audubon Society/Nature Conservancy sanctuary in South Carolina, demonstrates how an ongoing program, developed to support
management and information and education activities, can provide
unanticipated benefits. When Hurricane Hugo radically altered the
forests of the Sanctuary, it created an opportunity to compare the
bird communities of the Sanctuary before and after the hurricane.
Elsewhere, the experience of Anderson Tully Company indicates
how monitoring birds, in support of timber management activities,
provides an important new training and evaluation tool for a private
industrial timber company. A powerful and hopeful take-home
message to southeastern land managers has been that getting
started is the most difficult, but also the most important part of a
monitoring program, and that regardless of the available effort, a
commitment to monitor will provide useful results over the long
term. The Partners In Flight process has brought managers and
research biologists together in the realization that some activities
are more widely useful than others, and this has improved our
common understanding of the populations and management of
birds in the Southeast.
Our charge is to examine the state of the art in monitoring.
This usually is construed to mean the most advanced possible practice of the art; our purpose here is to examine the
state of the art as it currently is practiced by managers in the
Southeast, in the hope of demonstrating activities that are
within the grasp of every manager. We believe that the
success of the North American Bird Conservation Strategy
depends more upon the activities of all managers than on
those of practitioners on the so-called cutting edge.
In: Bonney, Rick; Pashley, David N.; Cooper, Robert J.; Niles, Larry,
eds. 2000. Strategies for bird conservation: The Partners in Flight planning process; Proceedings of the 3rd Partners in Flight Workshop; 1995
October 1-5; Cape May, NJ. Proceedings RMRS-P-16. Ogden, UT: U.S.
Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research
Station.
Paul B. Hamel, USDA Forest Service, Center for Bottomland Hardwoods
Research, P.O. Box 227, Stoneville, MS 38776. Norman L. Brunswig and
Michael R. Dawson, Francis Beidler Forest, 336 Sanctuary Road,
Harleyville, SC 29448. Mike Staten, Anderson Tully Company, P.O. Box
761, Lake Village, AR 71653.
USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-16. 2000
We describe three separate monitoring activities. First,
we outline the strategy adopted for monitoring by the Southeast Management Working Group, and its realization in the
monitoring plans of the National Forest System and the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service in the South. Second, we outline
the experience of the managers of a private, nonprofit
organization, the National Audubon Society, in monitoring
birds on the Francis Beidler Forest. We here address monitoring the unintended consequences of management by
examining bird response to a catastrophic natural disturbance. Third, we describe the experience of a private, industrial timber company, Anderson Tully Company, in monitoring birds on their extensive holdings in the Mississippi
Alluvial Valley. This permits us to examine the unintended
outcomes of monitoring.
Case Studies ___________________
Case 1—Southeast Management Working
Group, Partners in Flight: Monitoring
Strategy for the Region
The Southeast Management Working Group has produced a strategy and set of standards for conducting monitoring of birds in the South (Hamel and others 1996). Based
primarily on experience developed in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley (Smith and others 1993), and consistent with the
suggestions of Ralph and others (1993), the strategy indicates to individual managers how they might establish a
monitoring program using point counts. The strategy provides managers with step-by-step guidelines to determine
the intent of the monitoring program, the level of detail
sufficient to meet the intent of the program, and the sample
sizes of counts sufficient to answer particular questions.
Our experience in the Southeast suggests that basic bird
lists are unavailable for most properties. We believe that
such lists are the keys to successful monitoring, inventory,
and public education involving birds; hence we encourage
managers to develop bird lists.
For properties with bird lists, we suggest that managers determine what sort of information is necessary for
them to carry out their management tasks successfully.
The step-by-step process outlined in the strategy guides
the manager to assess whether information on presenceabsence, relative abundance, or demography is the intent
of the monitoring activity. Detailed instructions allow the
135
manager to determine the number of point count samples
required to address two basic questions related to differences in numbers of birds. First, we address the question
“have bird communities on my property changed over the
years?” Second, we address the question “have bird communities responded to management treatments that I
have applied?” Our “Quick-and-Dirty” estimation of sample
size starts with these questions, proceeds through the
development of an estimate of variability derived from a
pilot sample of counts, describes the estimation of the
power available from a given sample of counts, and details
how to determine a sufficient number of point counts to
address a given question with a particular defined precision. Unfortunately, no magic number of counts can be
named to satisfy every need.
Application of this process has resulted in the deployment
of broad-scale monitoring schemes on U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service properties (R. Coon, personal communication) and
on U.S. Forest Service properties (Gaines and Morris 1996)
in the Southeast. Importantly, the schemes developed by
these two public agencies are within reasonable reach of
what managers across the region can endorse and carry out.
An unintended benefit of this process has been the development of a commercially available software package that
supports the data standards developed for the Southeast
(Guddanti 1994).
All of these activities have taken place in the 1990s, with
growing recognition of the impetus and value of becoming a
Partner in Flight. Yet monitoring of birds is not a new idea
in the South, although it has been a fairly low priority in
many quarters. Nevertheless, some managers truly have
been lying in wait for Partners in Flight. We present two
additional case histories illustrating how the development
of a monitoring program that is responsive to the information needs of the land manager can provide unintended
benefits to the manager, including scientific information,
public education, and revenue.
Case 2—The Francis Beidler Forest:
Monitoring Response to Natural
Catastrophe
The Francis Beidler Forest, a sanctuary jointly owned by
the National Audubon Society and The Nature Conservancy, is managed by the National Audubon Society primarily as a place where 1000-year-old baldcypress (Taxodium
distichum) trees can grow in peace. At purchase in 1973 the
sanctuary consisted of about 3,600 acres (1,500 ha) nearly
evenly divided between old-growth bottomland hardwood
forest, especially cypress-tupelo (Nyssa aquatica) stands,
and similar stands that had been selectively logged during
the 1960s.
To learn more about their land, NAS put a single person
in the field for 10 mornings per year, and established two
objectives for a bird monitoring program. First, they wanted
to track fluctuations in populations of breeding birds on the
property as one measure of forest health and to develop a
bird species list for forest visitors. Second, they decided to
compare populations on the old-growth with those on the
cutover portion of the tract. To address these two objectives,
Beidler Forest staff set up two 8-ha spot-mapping plots on
136
sites of matching topography, with one in the old-growth
portion, and the other in the cutover portion of the tract.
After initial sampling of each tract in 1979, an alternating
schedule was adopted in which one of the plots was sampled
each year.
A total of 16 censuses have been conducted, eight on each
of the plots. Fifty-seven species have been recorded on at
least one of the censuses, 50 on the cutover plot, and 49 on the
old-growth plot. Seven species occur at different densities on
the two plots, five of which are Neotropical migratory birds
(appendix). Four of these species have significantly greater
densities on the cutover and three on the old-growth plot,
indicating that neither habitat on the Beidler Forest is
better for all the species of the sanctuary. Among the species
more abundant on the cutover plot is the Swainson’s Warbler (Limnothlypis swainsonii) whose population peaked on
the cutover plot in 1979, 12 years after the initial harvesting
of much of the canopy of the stand.
These data have been useful to Beidler Forest managers
in their own right, but are not the major story of the bird
monitoring program there. On the night of 21 September
1989, Hurricane Hugo visited the Low Country of South
Carolina, bringing 150 mph (240 kph) winds and extensive
destruction to the forests on the sanctuary. Among the very
few positive remnants after the storm was the opportunity
to compare the populations of bird species on the sample
plots before and after the storm. These comparisons provided Beidler Forest staff with quantitative information to
demonstrate to their visitors the actual effects of the storm
on the birds of the Beidler Forest. Densities of five species
were shown to be different on the Beidler Forest after the
storm by Wilcoxon 2-sample tests; each is a Neotropical
migratory bird. Densities of Yellow-billed Cuckoos (Coccyzus
americanus; Z = –2.11, P <0.05), Chimney Swifts (Chaetura
pelagica; Z = –1.97, P <0.05), Wood Thrushes (Hylocichla
mustelina; Z = –2.86, P <0.01), and Northern Parulas (Parula
americana; Z = –2.95, P <0.01) declined, while those of Bluegray Gnatcatcher (Polioptila caerulea; Z = 2.7, P <0.01) increased. Among species whose densities did not differ significantly after the storm were the Yellow-throated Warbler
(Dendroica dominica) and Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis
cardinalis). Because baldcypress trees were particularly
resistant and hence relatively unchanged by the winds of the
storm (N. Brunswig, unpublished data), we expected that
birds associated with cypress stands, such as Yellow-throated
Warblers, would be affected less than others by the storm.
Northern Cardinals, on the other hand, increased on the oldgrowth plot to numbers typical of their use of the cutover plot
before the storm. These birds are associated with shrubby
understory in the forest, which increased dramatically after
the storm.
The effects of Hurricane Hugo on the bird community of
the Beidler Forest could not be evaluated were it not for the
foresight of managers to institute a monitoring program.
The techniques used were put into practice long before a
larger scale program like Partners in Flight, and so do not
use the same standards as currently employed in the Southeast. Nevertheless, they serve the needs of the manager and
have provided some valuable information on bird community response to a very infrequent natural perturbation that
was, otherwise, a disastrous event for the sanctuary.
USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-16. 2000
Case 3—Anderson Tully Company:
Monitoring Provides Unexpected Benefit
of Information Transfer
Anderson Tully Company is a private timber company
engaged in production of large sawtimber trees (Staten and
Hodges 1997). The company, founded in 1889, owns lands in
the Mississippi Alluvial Valley from Illinois to Louisiana. It
maintains a set of permanent 0.2-acre (0.08-ha) plots on
which are measured timber inventory variables for their
timber management activities. Plots, classified into one of
11 forest site types, are sampled every five years.
Because a large proportion of their land is leased to hunt
clubs, over time the company’s wildlife management staff
bolstered the list of inventory variables by adding measures of
presence of four browse plants important for white-tailed deer
(Odocoileus virginianus): dewberry (Rubus sp.), honeysuckle
(Lonicera sp.), greenbrier (Smilax sp.), and trumpetcreeper
(Campsis radicans), as well as measurements of live and dead
cavity trees.
During a 1990 field trip for the Arkansas Chapter of The
Wildlife Society to company lands in eastern Arkansas, the
land manager noticed that a considerable store of information about bird occurrence existed among his wildlife staff.
Excited about the variety of birds on company lands, he
decided to add information about bird occurrence to the
standard inventory. Concern also existed about potential
conflicts between bird populations and certain management
activities.
The company’s wildlife staff developed protocols for adding a continuous habitat inventory to the timber inventory.
The approach represented a hybrid of available effort and
desired coverage. A randomly selected subset of 65 of the
permanent plots was chosen for wildlife habitat monitoring, comprising five plots in each of nine forest site types on
company lands, and ten plots in each of the two most
common types (“Riverfront hardwoods-Dry site,” and “Upland Hardwoods-Good site”). Within each permanent wildlife monitoring plot, extent of downed woody vegetation,
both long wood and top materials, and stumps are mea2
2
sured. A set of 20 1-yd (0.84-m ) subplots also is sampled
for understory vegetation. Each of these 65 plots became
the center for a star of five bird point count stations, spaced
200 m apart.
The first sampling of these 325 point count stations was
conducted in 1994. A standard 10-minute count was conducted at each of the points. Vegetation sampling on bird
point count stations involved a visual determination of the
actual forest site type, as well as estimation of percent
coverage by the vegetation and the two most frequent species in vegetation layers. General layers involved ground
cover, midstory, and overstory. Within each of these layers,
field crews determined whether to separate coverage into
three or fewer sublayers. Field effort for this monitoring
activity involved a four-person crew for six field weeks.
Company plans call for resampling on the same 5-year
interval as the timber inventory plots. Point count data will
be prepared and summarized to the standards of the Southeast Management Working Group.
To train their staff to conduct this monitoring activity,
Anderson Tully Company wildlife biologists realized that no
USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-16. 2000
simple field guide, complete with a set of tapes of songs of
breeding birds, existed for the birds of bottomland hardwoods. Furthermore, existing larger treatments, such as
Hamel (1992b), did not present relationships of birds to
standard habitat structures in a quickly understood visual
manner. Consequently, company biologists and foresters
compiled a book, complete with species accounts, identification, habitat and other details of species biology, and a
narrative and visual summary of proposed silvicultural and
structural habitat use for each of 71 species (Staten 1994).
An audiotape or compact disk of songs of these species also
was prepared. The book and tape are available from the
company, and proceeds from the sale will be used to support
the company’s research activities.
The story, however, does not stop here. In the process of
developing this guide, establishing monitoring activities,
and training company biologists for this work, an interesting
thing happened. The consciousness of not only company
biologists, but of the company’s entire forest management
field staff, has expanded to include knowledge of birds as a
part of the store of knowledge about company lands. Field
foresters bring questions of bird identification to biologists;
through this interaction and the combined understanding of
forest structure and bird response on company lands, a
practical understanding of silviculture for songbirds on
company lands is emerging. At periodic department managers’ meetings, the land manager now conducts “field tests” in
which field managers make point counts of birds, and compare their counts to those of company biologists to improve
the quality of the general knowledge of birds among all
company field personnel. We propose that the experience of
this one timber company can be instructive to others interested in, or apprehensive about, adding specific songbird
activities to their land management program.
Summary ______________________
We have attempted to show, through three different examples, how monitoring activity must meet the recognized
needs of the land manager of a property. Our examples
indicate that well-designed monitoring activities can meet
efficiently the objectives of information gathering necessary
to the land management activities of a particular agency or
property owner. They further show that monitoring designed for a specific purpose can incidentally provide outstanding opportunities for responding to natural or planned
disturbances, for training staff, for educating clientele among
the general public, and for increasing income.
Several additional points can be made. First, in monitoring birds on a given property, benefits will accrue to the
managers who invest time in working with their neighbors
to develop and implement a monitoring scheme. Our current understanding of the effects of landscape factors on
bird distribution clearly indicates this common-sense notion. Second, successful monitoring activities can be developed through a step-by-step, adaptive process in which it is
not necessary to try to “run before one can walk.” Third,
monitoring activities that are integrated into the ongoing
staff training, public information, and decision-making
processes of the agency or institution will satisfy not only
the intended objectives. They also will put the enterprise in
137
a position of preparedness, of “lying in wait” for a future
that promises unexpected opportunities.
Acknowledgments ______________
Were it not for the diligence, enthusiasm, and guidance of
others we would have little to present. In particular, the
patient guidance of C. J. Ralph and the members of the
Monitoring Working Group, Partners in Flight, has been of
inestimable value. The work of Chuck Hunter, David Pashley,
and the monitoring committee of the Southeast Management Working Group, especially Winston Smith, Dan Twedt,
138
Jim Woehr, Eddie Morris, Bob Cooper, and Bob Hamilton,
made possible the development of the Southeast Management Working Group strategy. Glen Gaines spearheaded
implementation of the strategy in the U.S. Forest Service
Southern Region, and Richard Coon oversaw its application
in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Southeast. Bob
Cooper was a supportive editor and stimulator of this paper.
He and Mel Warren served as reviewers for it. The use of
trade or firm names in this publication is for reader information and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture of any product or service.
USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-16. 2000
Appendix: Summary of bird occurrence on two 8-ha plots
on the Francis Beidler Forest, SC, 1979-1995.
Species
Great Blue Heron, Ardea herodias
Great Egret, Casmerodius albus
Little Blue Heron, Egretta caerulea
Green-backed Heron, Butorides striatus
Yellow-crowned Night-Heron, Nycticorax violaceus
White Ibis, Eudocimus albus
Wood Duck, Aix sponsa
Turkey Vulture, Cathartes aura
Red-shouldered Hawk, Buteo lineatus
Northern Bobwhite, Colinus virginianus
Mourning Dove, Zenaida macroura
Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Coccyzus americanus
Eastern Screech-Owl, Otus asio
Barred Owl, Strix varia
Chimney Swift, Chaetura pelagica
Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Archilochus colubris
Red-headed Woodpecker, Melanerpes erythrocephalus
Red-bellied Woodpecker, Melanerpes carolinus
Downy Woodpecker, Picoides pubescens
Hairy Woodpecker, Picoides villosus
Pileated Woodpecker, Dryocopus pileatus
Eastern Wood-Pewee, Contopus virens
Acadian Flycatcher, Empidonax virescens
Great Crested Flycatcher, Myiarchus crinitus b
Blue Jay, Cyanocitta cristata
American Crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos
Fish Crow, Corvus ossifragus
Carolina Chickadee, Parus carolinensis
Tufted Titmouse, Parus bicolor
White-breasted Nuthatch, Sitta carolinensis b
Carolina Wren, Thryothorus ludovicianus
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Polioptila caerulea
Wood Thrush, Hylocichla mustelina
Gray Catbird, Dumetella carolinensis
Brown Thrasher, Toxostoma rufum
White-eyed Vireo, Vireo griseus b
Yellow-throated Vireo, Vireo flavifrons
Red-eyed Vireo, Vireo olivaceus
Northern Parula Warbler, Parula americana
c
Black-throated Blue Warbler, Dendroica caerulescens
Yellow-throated Warbler, Dendroica dominica b
Pine Warbler, Dendroica pinus
American Redstart, Setophaga ruticilla
Prothonotary Warbler, Protonotaria citrea
Swainson’s Warbler, Limnothlypis swainsonii b
c
Ovenbird, Seiurus aurocapillus
Louisiana Waterthrush, Seiurus motacilla
Kentucky Warbler, Oporornis formosus
Common Yellowthroat, Geothlypis trichas
Hooded Warbler, Wilsonia citrina b
Yellow-breasted Chat, Icteria virens
Summer Tanager, Piranga rubra
Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis b
Indigo Bunting, Passerina cyanea
Eastern Towhee, Pipilo erythrophthalmus
Common Grackle, Quiscalus quiscula
Brown-headed Cowbird, Molothrus ater
Cutover plot
Old-growth plot
--------------n=8------------0.02 ± 0.04
0.0 ± 0.0
0.01 ± 0.04
0.0 ± 0.0
0.01 ± 0.04
0.0 ± 0.0
0.09 ± 0.2
0.0 ± 0.0
0.05 ± 0.05
0.05 ± 0.05
0.04 ± 0.05
0.04 ± 0.05
1.6 ± 4.4
5.6 ± 6.7
0.0 ± 0.0
0.02 ± 0.05
2.4 ± 4.6
5.7 ± 6.0
0.0 ± 0.0
0.01 ± 0.04
0.04 ± 0.05
0.05 ± 0.05
39.0 ± 23.8
30.9 ± 17.0
0.0 ± 0.0
0.01 ± 0.04
0.1 ± 0.2
0.2 ± 0.2
1.6 ± 4.3
12.6 ± 11.1
0.02 ± 0.05
1.4 ± 4.0
1.6 ± 4.4
4.9 ± 9.2
73.7 ± 37.5
79.3 ± 34.9
28.2 ± 23.5
44.3 ± 21.8
0.0 ± 0.0
4.3 ± 8.3
22.0 ± 8.6
26.0 ± 12.9
0.0 ± 0.0
1.4 ± 4.0
91.0 ± 27.8
95.5 ± 53.6
38.2 ± 28.2
109.6 ± 34.0
0.02 ± 0.05
0.06 ± 0.05
3.2 ± 5.7
5.0 ± 9.2
1.6 ± 4.3
0.06 ± 0.05
32.4 ± 24.4
35.8 ± 17.5
125.4 ± 63.7
113.8 ± 17.4
3.2 ± 5.7
47.1 ± 24.9
104.9 ± 46.4
99.7 ± 49.5
344.1 ± 129.6
304.1 ± 91.4
18.5 ± 17.8
8.5 ± 11.2
0.8 ± 2.2
1.4 ± 4.0
1.5 ± 4.4
0.0 ± 0.0
151.2 ± 56.7
49.9 ± 28.2
12.4 ± 18.6
7.7 ± 14.1
121.1 ± 32.1
111.7 ± 47.5
147.4 ± 59.2
160.1 ± 115.4
0.04 ± 0.05
0.01 ± 0.04
10.1 ± 12.2
52.7 ± 24.2
0.01 ± 0.04
3.5 ± 9.9
0.0 ± 0.0
0.01 ± 0.04
101.8 ± 32.8
83.6 ± 39.4
20.9 ± 30.4
1.4 ± 4.0
0.04 ± 0.05
0.02 ± 0.05
0.01 ± 0.04
0.0 ± 0.0
3.1 ± 5.7
0.02 ± 0.05
0.02 ± 0.05
0.7 ± 2.0
102.3 ± 37.0
23.9 ± 25.6
0.01 ± 0.04
0.0 ± 0.0
10.9 ± 10.1
26.7 ± 14.3
72.9 ± 17.3
37.2 ± 37.7
0.0 ± 0.0
0.7 ± 2.0
1.5 ± 4.4
0.0 ± 0.0
1.2 ± 3.2
0.05 ± 0.05
3.1 ± 8.7
4.3 ± 11.9
Density ± S.D., in pairs/100 haa.
a
Partial territories and visitor species quantified as by Hamel (1992).
Species densities differ between the plots by Wilcoxon 2-sample test at P = 0.05.
Transient species recorded only as visitors during migration.
b
c
USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-16. 2000
139