Patuxent Wildlife Research Center

Breeding Bird Survey

12100 Beech Forest Road

Laurel, MD 20708-4038

www.pwrc.usgs.gov

Memorandum to Cooperators

SUMMER 2007

CONTENT HIGHLIGHTS —

1 — ONLINE DATA ENTRY IMPROVEMENTS 4 — ROUTE TROUBLES

2 — NEW OBSERVERS WELCOME 5 — FREQUENT QUESTIONS

2 — BBS HIT HARD BY LOW MAP RETURN 5 — 2006 ROUTE COVERAGE

3 — RECENT MEETINGS & PLANNING 7 — BBS STRATEGIC PLAN

3 — BBS MEXICO EXPANSION 8 — PARTICIPANT AWARDS

4 — COORDINATOR UPDATES – MS, FL, OH 9 — NOTES FROM THE FIELD

ONLINE DATA ENTRY IMPROVEMENTS (back to top)

Last year’s release of the new BBS data entry portal was met by overwhelmingly positive response from BBS observers. As to be expected though, a number of bugs did turn up that required addressing and, with the help of patient and dedicated observers, we also identified a number of areas where further improvements could be made.

In the intervening year we have dedicated much time and effort to working out the bugs and towards incorporating suggestions for making the system more functionally smooth and user-friendly. This includes resolving previous issues relating to excessive noise values, species totals on review pages, the pasting of route coordinates from external documents, etc.

It should be noted that a number of personal computer settings outside of the BBS can also interfere with the way that web content, such as BBS web pages, are displayed and function on individual computers. We have tried to accommodate as many of these settings as possible but request that observers 1) use one of the common contemporary internet browsers (standard on most computers released after 2002) and 2) disable their personal pop-up blockers once logged into the BBS data entry system.

We encourage all observers to use the web entry portal to enter their 2007 bird data and manage their stop descriptions/coordinates online for this eliminates the costly and time consuming steps of scanning data sheets and updating paper map information in the office. We appreciate the time, effort, and patience devoted to helping to improve our system and look forward to making further improvements to ensure that the BBS experience is a fun and productive one for all.

NEW OBSERVERS WELCOME (back to top)

If this is your first year, thank you for joining the flock of thousands who make the BBS a success! Through your efforts and those of your peers, federal, state, and local conservation agencies have reliable bird population information on which to base sound conservation and management decisions. We want your BBS observer experience to be as enjoyable and meaningful as possible. In working towards this goal we provide many resources, conveniently located on our general web site, to assist you. For instance, there you can find and download previous years’ species lists for your route, see where neighboring routes are located in the state, map the location of species found in the region using the NBII mapping application, and view trend maps for particular species. If you would like, we can also loan you bird song CD’s and other resources to help you brush up on you identification skills during the winter months. You can find our contact information both online and at the close of this Memorandum and we are happy to accommodate requests whenever we can. If you have any questions or problems regarding the BBS, please do not hesitate to contact your state coordinator or us here at the national office.

Here are a few guidelines to follow to help ensure that your first year is as productive and enjoyable as it can be:

1) Complete the BBS Methodology Training program and the final review.

We can not use your data if you do not.

2) Scout your route before the actual survey day to avoid unexpected delays.

3) Pay close attention to the instructions regarding survey timing and to the

specific route start time indicated on your data form(s).

4) Submit your data electronically for faster feedback.

5) Return your completed forms and maps in a timely manner at the end of each season.

6) HAVE FUN -- take a friend, take pictures, or mentor a fledgling birder.

Thank you again for participating and we look forward to hearing about your adventures with the BBS.

BBS HIT HARD BY LOW MAP RETURN (back to top)

Many observers believe that they are helping the BBS by retaining their maps since they intend to survey their route(s) in the following year. While we certainly appreciate this consideration, the BBS does not have the means or the resources to distinguish and track observers who wish to help us from those who have lost a map or need a replacement. To ensure that all observers receive necessary materials for the upcoming field season, the BBS must err on the side of caution and annually prepare a complete packet of materials for all observers. In cases where maps where not returned, the staff must retrieve file copies of those maps from archives, produce copies, and then locate and mark original route paths.

With well over 30% of maps not returned in the 2006 BBS season, weeks of critical time were expended in preparing maps for the 2007 field season – many of which did not likely need replacing. In order to reduce this burden to the BBS program and to keep the permanent map record up to date we need you to return your maps with your data in a timely manner at the end of each season. We thank you for your cooperation!

RECENT MEETINGS & PLANNING (back to top)

1) North American Ornithological Conference IV – Veracruz, Mexico – October 3-7, 2006.

· Establishing A Mexican Breeding Bird Survey Program Workshop –

A workshop to initiate advanced discussion and to begin laying the foundation for the implementation of a Mexico BBS program by 2010. The workshop was oriented towards using examples from the U.S. and Canada to illustrate the application of BBS population trend data to avian conservation in Mexico, discussing responsibility structure and participation expectations.

· Oral and poster presentations –

BBS staff participated in the scientific sessions giving three presentations, including one in a ‘Monitoring Networks of the Americas’ symposium.

2) Patuxent Wildlife Research Center Biennial Science Meeting – MD – October 11-13, 2006.

· Chan Robbins Symposium Part 1: Breeding Bird Survey

A special session of presentations focusing on the value of the BBS and Chan’s origination of and contribution to it. Topics included: “BBS: The Canadian Wildlife Service perspective”, “The modern BBS and its evolution over the past 20 years”, “BBS data application: Trends and other lessons learned”, etc.

Comprehensive meeting minutes and lists of other products from these events can be found at:

http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbs/bbsnews/MeetingProducts/index.html

BBS MEXICO EXPANSION (back to top)

Following wrap-up discussions conducted in late October, the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) announces the success of its initiatory step toward creating a Mexican BBS program. As the primary source of large-scale, long-term population data for over 400 of North America’s breeding bird species, the BBS is the Federal government’s flagship wildlife surveillance program. This collaborative effort between the USGS and the Canadian Wildlife Service, and headquartered at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, has been identifying species at risk and informing bird conservation planning efforts of U.S. and Canadian resource management agencies for over 40 years. To date, the ability of the BBS to document the status of species whose ranges extend into Mexico has been limited to the U.S. portions of these species’ ranges. Now, on the heels of a comprehensive strategic planning effort, the BBS is embarking on a course aimed at implementing a Mexican BBS program by 2010. This initiative has been enabled by a productive dialogue with Mexican government biologists and by the promising results of a 3-year feasibility study. On October 3, BBS staff kicked off this initiative by conducting a ‘Mexico BBS Expansion’ workshop in Veracruz, Mexico, with the collaboration of the Canadian Wildlife Service and Mexico’s Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad. Held in conjunction with the North American Ornithological Congress, this workshop was very well attended by potential Mexican participants. It introduced them to the great potential of the BBS for improving coverage of shared avian species as well as for tracking populations of their own endemic species, many of which may be especially vulnerable to environmental degradation. By emphasizing expansion through the enlisting of trained Mexicans, the workshop was a significant step toward making the BBS a truly North American program.

COORDINATOR UPDATES (back to top)

We welcome Nathan Stricker in Ohio, Dan Twedt in Mississippi, Mike Delany in Florida, and Eric Hynes in Maine to their new roles as BBS state coordinators. We look forward to long and productive relationships with them and, for their generous service, we thank their respective predecessors, Scott Hull, David Watts, Karen Whitney, and Judy Walker.

Ohio Mississippi Florida

Nathan Stricker Dan Twedt Michael Delany

Olentangy Wildlife USGS Patuxent Wildlife Florida Fish & Wildlife

Research Station Research Center Conservation Commission

ODNR-Division of Wildlife 2524 South Frontage Road Wildlife Research Laboratory

8589 Horseshoe Rd. Vicksburg, MS 39180 4005 South Main Street

Ashley, OH 43003 601-629-6605 Gainesville, FL 32601

740-747-2525 x22 Dan_Twedt@usgs.gov 352-955-2230

Nathan.Stricker@dnr.state.oh.us Mike.Delany@MyFWC.com

Maine

Eric Hynes

Maine Audubon Society

20 Gilsland Farm Road

Falmouth, ME 04105

207-781-2330 x237

ehynes@maineaudubon.org

Current state coordinator contact information is available on the BBS web page via the “Contact Us” link.

ROUTE TROUBLES? (back to top)

To be sure, routes in increasingly urbanized areas tend to be less appealing for birders than those in more protected and pristine areas. Considering that routes with dwindling natural habitat provide some of the strongest indications of landscape level change though, such routes are a critical component of the descriptive power of the BBS. That said, when it comes to addressing route problems, the BBS office often finds itself between a rock and hard place. On the one hand, the value of the BBS comes from both the longevity of its existing routes and through its non-biased sampling of both pristine and less than pristine areas. On the other hand, safety is the highest priority in the BBS, and the staff would also like to maintain a fun as well as safe experience for all observers.

As the degree of urbanization has steadily increased over the past decade, not surprisingly, so too has the number of route problem requests that the BBS receives annually. Due to the large volume of requests and our low staffing, we have not been able to resolve all requests each year. We are working on solving this but, in the mean time, we ask that observers who have submitted route problems but who have not received a reply yet please review section 13 of the BBS instruction booklet before resubmitting. Many problems can be solved simply by shifting a stop by the permitted .10 of a mile or by running the route as ‘Sunday only’, a day when traffic is significantly less. In special cases where significant safety hazards are imminent and immediate, please call the BBS office directly (301-497-5753) for a route solution. When reporting the remainder of cases using the comment form, please provide a contact number or email along with a description of the route problem in as much detail and as succinctly as possible.

TOP 2 MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS OF 2006 (back to top)

Why Don’t All Of The Species That I Regularly Record Appear On My Data Sheets?

Usability and printing and mailing costs are all concerns that factor into the design of a good functional data sheet. Here at the BBS we’ve managed to limit our data sheets to twelve pages by using efficiencies such as apportioning 5 stops to each page. In a similar vane, for the species list, we employ an algorithm that selects for printing the 65 most abundant and numerous contemporary breeding species, leaving 9 empty spaces for less regularly occurring species.

My Route Species List Is Declining, Can We Shift My Route To A More Productive Area?

Unlike other familiar bird ‘counts’ with a goal of counting all members of a population, the BBS is designed specifically to ‘survey’ bird populations. The word “survey” describes a method of collecting information from a sample of individuals in a population. In the BBS the sampling tool is the route. As with other bona fide surveys, it is important that samples be collected such that no one portion of a population has any better chance of being sampled than any other. In the case of the BBS this means that routes are selected and placed in the landscape randomly with respect to habitat quality and species richness.

2006 ROUTE COVERAGE (back to top)

Our thanks to everyone who participated in the 2006 BBS season! Data for 2933 routes have been received by the national office so far. While the numbers are not exact (a small percentage of 2006 data has yet to arrive), Table 1 below provides a good indication of how route coverage in each state shaped up. Just two states experienced notable increases in route coverage this year, Louisiana and Georgia. Louisiana observers picked up 13 more routes than they had in 2005 – a jump from 50 to 70% coverage! That is in no small part a testament to the hard work of coordinator Gary Lester who, in the wake of 2005’s storms, rallied the troops to set a base line from which to measure future avian response to habitat recovery. Georgia deserves special mention too as this is the second year that coverage in that state has increased by more than 8 routes - bringing coverage up to 60%. That may not sound like a lot relative to some of the black states depicted in figure 1 below but, when you consider that Georgia added more than 35 newly created routes in 2006, coordinator Todd Schneider’s efforts have been appreciably great there.

Nine states experienced a coverage loss of more than five routes in 2005. Check and see if your state was one of them by comparing the “sampled in” columns from years 2005 and 2006 in Table 1. Four states dropped from their previous benchmarks in the 76-100% coverage bracket to the next lower 51-75% bracket. Maine and Mississippi are still in special need of more observer assistance for their sampling effort. Fewer than 50% of routes in these states were covered in 2005 (see figure 1 below) leaving plenty of room for qualified observers wishing to make a difference. If you nest in any of these states, or one of the states experiencing reduced coverage, please encourage your qualified birder friends to migrate over to your state coordinator to lend a wing with the BBS. As always, coordinator contact information is conveniently located on our web site.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER - Do you have BBS data from previous years that were never sent in? Remember, it is never too late. Whether they are from last year or a decade ago, we can still use them. While we don’t wish to promote late data submission, don’t throw them out just

because they are old; send them to us!

Table 1. 2005-2006 Route Coverage Summary
UNITED STATES
	Number of Routes				Number of Routes
State/Prov	Existing	Sampled	Sampled	State/Prov	Existing	Sampled	Sampled
	in 2006	in 2005	in 2006		In 2006	in 2005	in 2006
AL	91	78	68	PR	44	8	8
AK	104	69	61	RI	5	1	2
AZ	65	48	50	SC	34	28	24
AR	32	30	30	SD	61	32	36
CA	230	130	128	TN	47	42	38
CO	136	110	111	TX	198	156	148
CT	16	14	10	UT	101	86	80
DE	10	8	10	VT	23	17	13
FL	90	72	75	VA	70	62	48
GA	96	48	56	WA	93	75	70
ID	58	55	52	WV	57	52	44
IL	101	93	91	WI	92	85	86
IN	61	39	34	WY	108	62	60
IA	33	23	22	Totals	3517	2589	2478
KS	61	49	46
KY	47	29	32	CANADA
LA	68	33	46
ME	70	43	35	AB	180	90	74
MD	56	54	48	BC	134	69	71
MA	24	16	15	NWT	13	7	1
MI	86	56	57	MB	67	39	52
MN	85	60	52	NB	31	18	14
MS	37	14	14	NF/LB	30	14	14
MO	53	50	46	NU	4	0	0
MT	65	53	54	NS	28	20	15
NE	46	35	34	ON	188	76	99
NV	41	21	23	PEI	4	1	1
NH	23	20	18	PQ	157	61	71
NJ	28	19	17	SK	87	31	27
NM	62	61	62	YT	38	21	16
NY	112