North Coast and Cascades Network landbird monitoring: Report for the 2022 field season
Authors: Holmgren Amanda , Wilkerson Robert , Siegel Rodney , Ransom Jason 
Published: December 2023

The North Coast and Cascades Network (NCCN) continued to implement the Network?s Landbird Monitoring Protocol in 2022, 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 15 years (2007?2021), except for 2017 when data collection was temporarily suspended to reallocate resources for a 5-year data synthesis. In 2022, we conducted 1,189 point counts at point count survey 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). We also conducted 72 point counts at Lewis and Clark National Historical Park (LEWI), including 36 at Cape Disappointment, 28 at Fort Clatsop, 5 at Sunset Beach, and 3 at Yeon.

Across the three large parks, we documented the presence of 130 species and one hybrid, 105 of which were detected during point counts. For 57 species (all species for which we amassed at least 96 point count detections over the period 2005?2022), we present the total number of detections of each species on each park?s annual panel transects during the 2005?2022 field seasons. We caution, however, 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.

The number of bird detections on annual-panel transects across all three large parks decreased by 650 between 2021 and 2022, though the magnitude of change varied among the parks. At both MORA and OLYM detections decreased between 2021 and 2022. When factoring in the number of point counts conducted each year, both parks saw a decrease in the average number of birds per count (a decrease of 9% at MORA and 24% at OLYM). At NOCA there was very little change in the number of detections between 2021 and 2022.

A measurable part of the overall decrease in detections across the Network in 2022 was due to a high number of red crossbill detections in 2021, particularly at MORA and OLYM. We detected them in higher numbers in both of these parks than in any of the previous 15 years, but in 2022 our detections dropped to numbers more similar to previous years. Several other species were also detected in slightly lower numbers in the three large parks in 2022 than in 2021, which contributed to the overall decrease in detections. Golden-crowned kinglet and Pacific wren detections in particular decreased across all three parks between 2021 and 2022. Despite these slight changes, overall detection numbers of most species across the parks were not markedly different between the two years. Interpretation of these results will be completed as part of the next multi-year trend analysis, which will account for annual variation in survey effort, observer effects, and detection probability.