Carden Alvar Point Counts

The Carden Alvar is east of Orillia and North of Kirkfield, Ontario not far to the east of Lake Darymple. Breeding bird monitoring has occurred on Cameron and Windmill Ranches since the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) took ownership in 2003 and has occurred twice yearly since then involving the TOC, the OFO, Volunteer for Nature and The Couchiching Conservancy.

It is our goal to determine population trends as an input into the development of a management plan suitable to sustain this grassland habitat. The objective is to obtain a general map of the location and abundance of species across the property. The data will provide a basis for comparison after a significant number of counts have been completed.

2008 Point Count Dates

The point counts will be conducted in 2008 on Saturday, May 31 and Saturday, June 7.

Counts

Team members perform counts on two separate Saturdays two weeks apart on the last Saturday in May and the second Saturday in June.

Protocol

The volunteers gather at the meeting location at the front gate of the Cameron Ranch at 6:00 am to get organized and collect their data sheets. Teams are pre-arranged based on skill levels and familiarity with the area. Each team is assigned a set of locations to cover. Teams are driven to their starting point and they cover the assigned monitoring stations in order. At each station the teams perform two 2-minute points counts separated by a 2-minute interval. The protocols are based on the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas Point Count procedures (without distinguishing between near and far observations). Observations are recorded on a point sheet count form.

Roundup

At 11:30 am the teams reassemble for a “roundup” to collate the observations for the day.

The study areas are in the Cameron Ranch and the Windmill Ranch.

These locations were determined using Ecological Land Classification for Southern Ontario (Lee et al 1997) to ensure inclusion of representative samples of all vegetative communities. The locations are no less than 300 metres apart to ensure that the birds will not be doubly counted.

Cameron Ranch

There are 16 monitoring locations established on the Cameron Ranch.

Windmill Ranch

There are 13 monitoring locations established on the Windmill Ranch.