Alaska Bird Observatory

1998 Annual Report

A Message from the Director

This was an exciting year for ABO, dominated by record captures of birds at Creamer’s Field, several new research projects, tremendous growth in our outreach and public education efforts, and a doubling of our membership base. These activities were united by a common theme &endash; partnerships.

ABO staff worked closely with the Denali Institute and several government agencies, including the Department of Defense and National Park Service, to monitor landbirds in interior Alaska. As an active member of Boreal Partners in Flight, we coordinated with other scientists and educators to improve our research and outreach efforts. We continued to work cooperatively with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to conduct migration-monitoring research and environmental education programs at Creamer’s Field. In conjunction with Camp Habitat, we designed and implemented the first Alaska Bird Camp for young birders and budding ornithologists. And our annual Birdathon, a joint fund-raising event with Arctic Audubon Society, raised awareness and over $10,000 for our respective conservation programs.

Although partnerships are dictated somewhat by funding constraints and the need to pool resources, they allow the cooperators to greatly increase their effectiveness and progress toward meeting common goals. The task of monitoring and conserving bird populations in Alaska is massive, requiring the efforts of government agencies, non-governmental organizations, volunteers, financial contributors, and concerned citizens who care about the future of Alaska’s birds. This report illustrates the commitment and cooperation of many of these cooperators.

As we look ahead to our 9th year of operation, I want to thank our staff, interns, volunteers, board members, organizational partners, and financial contributors who made 1998 so successful. In particular, I want to thank Lori Quakenbush for her long and dedicated leadership as president of ABO’s board of directors.

Happy Birding!
Nancy DeWitt
Executive Director

1998 Financial Review

(January 1 through December 31, 1998)

Fiscal Year 1998 highlights:

• Revenues increased 48% over 1997, which allowed us to devote almost $35,000 to new programs.
  
• Restricted income, mainly grants and contracts, increased by 60% over 1997.
  
• Revenues from memberships and contributions increased from $14,438 in 1997 to $24,344 in 1998, a rise of nearly 70%.
  
• The 1998 Birdathon, a joint fundraiser with Arctic Audubon Society, raised $10,794--$3,821 more than in 1997. At the same time, we decreased our fundraising expenses by 42% this year.
  
• Excess revenue over expenses, $10,011, includes funds received in late 1998 that are dedicated to the 1999 Alaska Bird Camp and Adopt-A-Net program. The remaining funds were added to our small, but vitally important reserve fund.
  
• ABO received $22,814 of donated equipment, fundraising items, and in-kind contributions. Of special note was a $14,500 cost-share grant received by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that paid for part of our Education Coordinator’s salary and various program expenses.

INCOME

EXPENSES

1998 Alaska Bird Observatory Education Program

by Andrea Swingley, Education Coordinator

The mission of the Alaska Bird Observatory (ABO) is to ensure the conservation of Alaska’s birds through research and education. Although avian research was the initial focus when ABO was founded, public education quickly developed as an essential component of our work. Since its inception in 1992, the ABO education program has continued to evolve and flourish. ABO offers an array of educational programs on songbirds, songbird ecology, and conservation that attracted over 3,000 participants in 1998. Our overall goal this year was to continue combining scientific research with education to encourage awareness, understanding, appreciation, and critical thinking about Alaskan songbird ecology and conservation.

Some of our major accomplishments in 1998 included:

• Providing banding demonstrations that introduce the Alaska Bird Observatory, methods of songbird research, and conservation issues for 130 school, camp, or youth groups (2,763 participants) and 422 independent visitors to the Creamer’s Field Migration Station.
  
• Conducting a five-day, pilot "Alaska Bird Camp" in cooperation with Camp Habitat for eight youth ages 10-12 to learn about resident and migrant birds in interior Alaska. Participants learned about bird identification and ecology, conducted research, explored careers in science, talked with resource professionals, and met other youth with similar interests. The camp was based at Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge in Fairbanks, and included field trips to a variety of habitats.
  
• Completing the development and promotion of an interactive workbook and teaching unit for K &emdash; 6 grades that promotes conservation of migratory and resident birds in Alaska’s boreal forest. These materials are designed to promote critical thinking and problem-solving skills related to the boreal forest songbird populations of Alaska. In fall 1998, 54 educators received copies of the teaching unit, and 986 copies of the activity book were distributed to students and educators. The teaching materials are available to anyone interested through the ABO web site at http://www.alaskabird.org/bfsunit/index.html.
  
• Developing and conducting workshops on songbird ecology, bird watching, and bird feeding for presentation to youth and adult audiences. ABO offered two classroom workshops on getting started watching birds and two accompanying "Basics of Birding" walks for looking at birds in the field. We also offered "Deciphering Dendroicas, or How to differentiate warblers in fall plumage," a workshop and slide presentation and "Walk away those warbler woes" field trip. In September and October, ABO conducted three programs on winter birds and bird feeding. In all, 187 people participated in special educational programs.
  
• Training student interns in field research techniques and environmental education methods. ABO’s research and education programs employed seven interns during the 1998 field season. Summer research projects included Creamer’s Field Migration Station, and landbird surveys in Denali National Park and on Fort Wainwright. This was the first year we had an intern with the ABO education program. Amy Wise conducted countless banding demonstrations, served as a counselor for the Alaska Bird Camp, assisted with the operation of the Creamer’s Field Migration Station, entered data, and helped with coordinating volunteers.
  
• Conducting four Alaska Songbird Workshops in songbird ecology and avian research at three elementary schools: Ticasuk Brown Elementary, Joy Elementary, and University Park Elementary. The workshops at Ticasuk Brown and Joy were also part of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District’s Partners in Science program.
  
• ABO’s web site at http://www.alaskabird.org continued to grow in 1998. The site contains information about ABO’s history, research, educational programs, job and internship opportunities, and merchandise.

Major financial support for our education program was provided by: ABR, Inc; Alaska Conservation Foundation; Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.; ARCO Alaska, Inc.; Arctic Audubon Society; City of Fairbanks; Denali Institute; Environmental Protection Agency; Exxon Company, USA; Friends of Creamer’s Field; Lawson-Valentine Foundation; MAPCO Alaska Petroleum; National Park Service; Skaggs Foundation; and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

1998 Alaska Bird Observatory Research Program

by Anna-Marie Benson, Migration Program Manager

Conserving bird populations in Alaska requires reliable data on their abundance, distribution, survival, number of young produced, habitat preferences, and response to disturbance. ABO’s research programs are designed to obtain this information, and we are proud of our many successes in the past year. In addition to continuing our long-term landbird monitoring programs at Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge and in Denali National Park, in 1998 we established a new migration-monitoring station, studied habitat selection by forest birds, improved our training program, and compiled statewide banding data for Alaska landbirds. We’ve been fortunate to have advice from our Scientific Advisory Council to guide these projects.

Our goal to understand and conserve bird populations is strengthened through cooperation with other organizations with similar objectives. Through Boreal Partners in Flight, government and non-governmental agencies, including ABO, coordinate monitoring, research, professional training and public outreach efforts focusing on neotropical migrant birds. Similarly, our landbird monitoring work in Denali National Park and Preserve is coordinated through their long-term ecological monitoring program. This program brings together researchers from a broad array of disciplines that are working to attain a better understanding of ecosystem processes in the park. During 1998, we developed new partnerships and increased our awareness for future research needs through regional and local meetings.

Here is an overview of our accomplishments in 1998:

The pride of ABO remains our large-scale mist-netting program at Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge. This year we:

• Completed our seventh consecutive year of spring and fall migration monitoring.
  
• Banded a record number of 7,083 birds of 39 species, including our first-ever captures of a Merlin and Common Snipe. A Myrtle Warbler banded on 26 August was found dead on 1 January 1999 in Driftwood, Texas. This is ABO’s only winter band recovery of this species.
  
• Expanded and improved our data management system.
  
• Examined the distribution of rare passerine species in conjunction with Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge. The resulting manuscript focused on information we gathered through seven years of mist-netting and censusing efforts. These data will add to the current literature about passerine distribution in interior Alaska.
  
• Analyzed seven years of migration data to determine the length of time passerines spend on their breeding grounds, interannual variation in timing of migration, and seasonal differences in body condition of passerines. These results were presented at the 1998 Western Bird Banding Association Meeting in California.

ABO, in cooperation with the Denali Institute, operated a new migration-monitoring station in the Moose Creek River Valley in the western part of Denali National Park. Based on our first field season, this site appears to be an excellent location for establishment of a long-term migration-monitoring station. In 1998, we:

• Banded 1,289 birds of 27 species during 31 days of netting.
  
• Determined that 18 passerine species have potential for long-term population monitoring at this site based on their high capture rates. Additionally, 90% of the species we captured are not adequately monitored by the nationwide Breeding Bird Survey.
  
• Presented our results at the annual Boreal Partners in Flight meeting.

As part of Denali National Park and Preserve’s long-term ecological monitoring program (LTEM), ABO designed and implemented a landbird monitoring protocol for the park beginning in 1993. During 1998, we:

• Actively participated in the LTEM planning process.
  
• Censused birds along nine off-road point-count routes and two on-road routes for the sixth consecutive year.
  
• Established two new census routes in alpine tundra and riparian habitats.
  
• Concluded that, as in previous years, species richness was greatest near the western portion of the park, and indices of abundance remained relatively constant among years.

We examined the density of breeding passerines in relation to landscape attributes of the Tanana Flats and Yukon Maneuver Area on Fort Wainwright to determine habitat selection of common species in these areas. Accomplishments of this work include:

• Used a GIS map produced by ABR, Inc. to determine habitat availability. ABR’s expertise and assistance in interpretation of ecosite classifications made our analyses possible.
  
• Sampled 501 points to census birds by sight and sound.
  
• Evaluated habitat use by passerine species, finding that specific habitat types are selected (used more often than we’d expect by chance) by 20 species.
  
• Determined variation in species richness and relative abundance among habitat types.
  
• Provided recommendations that will aid management agencies during land-use planning.
  
• Presented results at the annual Boreal Partners in Flight meeting.

Banding small birds is a skill that takes intensive training and practice to become proficient. ABO offers a training program to teach biologists the skills necessary to band, age, sex, and identify passerines. During 1998, we:

• Trained six biologists during a two-week training program and conducted on-site visits to trainee’s banding sites.
  
• Added a lecture component to the program that includes passerine identification, banding ethics, and examination of specimens at the University of Alaska Museum.

Major funding by ABR, Inc., Arctic Audubon Society, Bureau of Land Management, Denali National Park Wilderness Center, Inc., Department of Defense, National Park Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

1998 Publications, Presentations, and Reports

• Benson, A-M. 1998. Creamer’s Field Migration Station spring and fall reports. Submitted to the Alaska Department of Fish & Game and Bureau of Land Management.
  
• ________. 1998. Denali Institute Migration Station annual report. Submitted to the Denali Institute.
  
• ________. How long do passerines occupy their breeding range in Northern Alaska? Presentation at the 1998 Western Bird Banding Association meeting, Marshall, CA. September, 1998.
  
• ________. Habitat selection of passerines on Fort Wainwright, Alaska. Presentation at the Boreal Partners In Flight annual meeting, Anchorage, AK. December, 1998.
  
• ________ and S.K. Springer. 1998. Landbird monitoring in Denali National Park and Preserve annual report. Submitted to the National Park Service.
  
• McDaniel, S.L. 1998. Boreal Forest Songbirds of Alaska teaching unit and activity book. Alaska Bird Observatory, Fairbanks, AK.

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