An overview of a landbird monitoring program at Tortuguero, on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica

Abstract

Since 1994, the Tortuguero Integrated Bird Monitoring Program has been monitoring birds in a coastal lowland rain forest of northeast Costa Rica. The Program has combined the use of area searches, constanteffort mist netting, and migration counts into a longterm landbird monitoring and training program following the recommendations of the Partners In Flight – Aves de las Américas monitoring guidelines. We briefly summarize the methods and results from our monitoring, including the numbers of bird species captured, censuses from 1994 through 2002, and age ratios for five species of migrant landbirds. Additionally, we describe our accomplishments in methods training and information exchange within the Americas.

Parent Publication

• Bird Conservation Implementation and Integration in the Americas: Proceedings of the Third International Partners in Flight Conference. 2002 March 20-24; Asilomar, California, Volume 1 and 2

Citation

Ralph, C. John; Widdowson, Margaret J.; Frey, Robert I.; Herrera, Pablo A.; O''Donnell, Brian P. 2005. An overview of a landbird monitoring program at Tortuguero, on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. In: Ralph, C. John; Rich, Terrell D., editors 2005. Bird Conservation Implementation and Integration in the Americas: Proceedings of the Third International Partners in Flight Conference. 2002 March 20-24; Asilomar, California, Volume 2 Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-191. Albany, CA: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station: p. 831-844