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Data Collection

There is a continual need for more data regarding the bird species and their relative and absolute abundance within our IBAs. Our data is used by other agencies and not-for-profit conservation groups to help guide their efforts at protecting and managing lands. Because of that, it is important that the data you collect be of high quality and as accurate as possible. These guidelines and protocols are meant to provide you with basic information on our process of data collection. It is recommended that you contact our IBA coordinator, Curtis Smalling, at csmalling@audubon.org to discuss your adopted IBA and how you would like to collect data.

Presence/Absence data

For many of you, this is the easiest (and most fun) data to collect for our IBAs. Many of you already keep checklists of the birds you see when out in the field (or at home). If you visit or regularly birdwatch in any of our IBAs, write down the birds you see and some indication of how plentiful they are or the actual number seen. A good system for that is to use normal checklist categories like “Abundant”, “Common”, or “Rare”. Many of you may even have a local park list or area list that you helped compile. We are interested in breeding season, wintering, and migration presence/absence data for all of our Important Bird Areas.

You may also enter these species lists directly into eBird. We can then directly retrieve those data. Make sure to be as accurate as possible when describing the location of your count.

Abundant – Seen in good numbers in all habitats
Common – Seen in good numbers in suitable habitats
Fairly Common - A few seen in a typical outing but not in all suitable habitat

Uncommon - Not seen on each outing, usually only a few times per year
Rare – Not seen each year

Counting the Birds

Audubon North Carolina is very interested in standardized counts of birds for a couple of major reasons. The first is the presence or absence of species of high conservation concern. One of the primary goals of the IBA program is to focus our conservation efforts on those areas where we can do the most good for the most threatened species or for a large number of species of priority. By identifying those areas with good numbers of a species or several priority species, we can prioritize our opportunities for on the ground conservation. Standardizing our methods allows us to compare different areas and the relative or absolute abundance of these species.

A second reason to count birds in our IBAs is to detect very long term trends in those areas. By monitoring bird populations over decades, it becomes statistically possible to assess population trends. This gives us a way to evaluate our efforts in preserving population numbers in our IBAs. It also allows us to look at ways that birds respond to changes in their habitats, either through natural succession in some areas or by human activities in others. It should be noted that looking at these population trends, even in a small area, requires years of counts to be reasonably accurate. For this reason we are recommending that counts occur in our IBAs at least once every three years. In this way, a single researcher can cover more area (a different area each year) or volunteers can spread the counts over three years, covering a smaller portion of the IBA each year, but covering the entire area every three years. For our statewide protocols for point counts (a common method of quantitative counting) click here.

Long-term national bird counting and monitoring projects are an important component of our IBA data for North Carolina. Helping with your local Christmas Bird Count or Breeding Bird Survey are ways you can generate data for the NC Adopt an IBA program. Make sure to ask your CBC complier if he or she is sharing the data from your count circle directly with Audubon North Carolina. Again, make sure you are following the guidelines for those projects as closely as possible.

Species Specific Projects

As you know, many species are hard to detect. Owls, nightjars, some gallinaceous birds like Ruffed Grouse, or rare species may be missed without specific surveys. These may include tape playback surveys, nest box checks or other methods. There are many national studies on-gong with their own protocols for monitoring or inventory of these species. See the Spring 2007 Adopt an IBA newsletter for more details.