The areas where this bird count took place are part of the South River Greenway. Three major streams - the North River - Bacon Ridge Branch - Broad Creek - flow through the largely undisturbed forest of the South River headwaters and help to provide the excellent bird habitat that is found there. Below Dr. Curson describes the importance of scientific counts and some of what he found while conducting surveys there late last spring.
"Bird Blitz is a specially designed survey, targeting at-risk bird species, which helps us determine whether a site qualifies as an Important Bird Area (IBA), under Audubon's IBA Program. IBAs are sites that meet rigorous criteria for providing essential habitat to one or more species of bird. At Crownsville we were particularly interested in assessing the bird community of the forest interior. IBAs have no legal status so there are no restrictions on land use. However IBA status does bring the benefits of recognition of a site's importance for bird conservation and also technical assistance from Audubon's science staff. This can include scientific advice on birds and their habitats to inform management decisions and also helping to organize efforts to monitor birds at the site.
In the spring of this year Rich Mason* and I managed to cover not just the Crownsville site but also other areas to the north and the south of the Bacon Ridge Branch and also the adjacent North River watershed to the west. Riverkeeper Drew Koslow also joined us for a couple of the surveys too. We completed 6 surveys in all over 6 mornings, and covered a total of 40.6 km during a total of 23.6 survey hours.
We were very impressed by the quality of the habitat for birds and we found 18 Forest-Interior Dwelling Species (FIDS), which is a good number for the Coastal Plain region of the state. Notably, the understory shrub layer was in good condition (many Maryland forests suffer from severe overbrowsing by deer) and this was reflected in the high densities of two declining FIDS, Kentucky warbler (total =14 birds) and Hooded Warbler (total = 31). According to the recently completed Maryland-DC Breeding Bird Atlas project (2002-06), Kentucky Warbler is one of the fastest declining bird species in the state. We also found some Prothonotary Warblers, which require bottomland forest and were not known from this area before (because birders had not explored it much), and also a Summer Tanager, which is at the northern edge of its range here.
We intend to nominate the entire forest area as an Important Bird Area - it is certainly worthy of protection and good habitat management as it represents the best site for breeding forest birds in Anne Arundel County outside the Patuxent Research Refuge."
More information on Audubon's IBA Program is available at http://www.audubonmddc.org/SciCon_IBAs.html. For more details about the South River Federation or SRLT's work in this area please contact Rich Mason at 410-573-4584 or rich_mason@fws.gov.
*Biologist with US Fish & Wildlife and SRLT Board Member
