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Abstract
Declining population trends of breeding birds associated with mature forests of the eastern and central United States have been a major concern for conservationists and land managers. As a landscape-scale, long-term, manipulative experiment, the Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment (HEE) in Indiana may provide important insights into factors associated with these declines. Accordingly, we quantified the characteristics of the breeding bird community at the HEE sites using 3 years of pre-treatment data. We also compared the HEE breeding bird community to similar data collected for the long-term monitoring program of the nearby Hoosier National Forest (HNF). From 2006 through 2008, we observed 74 species of birds across 240 survey points within the HEE sites, for a total of 17,806 detections. Of these, 62 species representing 17,340 detections were known to breed in the area. We adjusted the maximum counts at each survey point for differences in detectability, with small changes in adjusted density estimates for most species. Of the covariates used in modeling detectability, only sampling period (early/late in the morning) appeared consistently in the better fitting models. Abundance rankings showed that the HEE breeding avifauna was very similar to that of the HNF. Overall, the results suggested that the HEE sites supported a breeding bird community typical of mature Central Hardwood Forests and that these pre-treatment data will be useful to detect changes associated with the HEE treatments.
Parent Publication
Keywords
bats,
beetles,
birds,
Central Hardwoods,
experiment,
forest management,
human attitudes,
Indiana,
moths,
oak,
reptiles,
salamanders,
silviculture,
small mammals,
wildlife
Citation
Malloy, Melissa C.; Dunning, John B., Jr. 2013. Breeding bird communities of the hardwood ecosystem experiment. In: Swihart, Robert K.; Saunders, Michael R.; Kalb, Rebecca A.; Haulton, G. Scott; Michler, Charles H., eds. 2013. The Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment: a framework for studying responses to forest management. Gen. Tech. Rep. NRS-P-108. Newtown Square, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station: 126-141.
