Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 19:26:01 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Marcus Koenen Subject: NPS Bird Inventory MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi, Its great to see the addition of the Citizen Science opportunities to the MOS webpage. I thought I'd follow up and explain a bit ore about the National Park Service Bird Inventory in case anyone is interested in local activities. The NPS has started a program to inventory the natural resources in its parks. Our immediate focus is on amphibians, birds, fish, mammals, reptiles, and vascular plants. =20 =20 Our first goal was to determine what bird data already exists for the parks and then to initiate field studies to fill our information gaps. We have already received information for several parks including the C & O Canal and Rock Creek but we are always on the look out for more data. Scanning the archives of this listserve has also been a valuable resource to us. =20 We are now looking for volunteers interested in conducting year-round bird surveys at several Maryland parks with limited datasets including = Antietam National Battlefield, Catoctin Mountain Park, and Harpers Ferry. We are also working with several parks in Virginia and DC. The bird survey protocols are similar to those set up for Christmas Bird Counts and Breeding Bird Surveys. Parks are divided into sections with separate data collected in each section. Participants spend at least 5-hours per month at a park and identify as many species as possible keeping track of numbers of individuals seen. Breeding evidence should be noted when possible.=20 A number of people are already participating at each of the parks but we are always welcoming more participants to increase the accuracy of our data. More information including a detailed description of the protocol can be found on our web page: www.nps.gov/cue/bird.html. There are also links to each of the parks with driving directions. You may also call me directly at: 202-342-1443 x216 and I'll tell you more about the project and how to get involved. Cheers, Marcus Koenen Biological Inventories Coordinator National Park Service - National Capital Region 4598 MacArthur Blvd. NW Washington DC 20007 ========================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ========================================================================= ===========================================================================