Program Night: Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship, Sept. 23, 7 pm.

Suzanne Tomassi presents Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) on September 23, 2010. Join us and learn about bird banding and data collection.

Suzanne Tomassi, a founding member of Puget Sound Bird Observatory and a senior wildlife biologist with The Watershed Company, will speak at the September 2010 monthly meeting. She will talk about The Institute for Bird Populations’ (IBP) Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) program with an introduction and summary, accompanied by slides; on data collection techniques used by banders and ornithologists.

Suzanne has 18 years of experience banding, ageing, sexing, and measuring birds in SE Asia, S America, Canada, and throughout the US. She presently manages a MAPS station at Morse Wildlife Preserve in Pierce County.

The Institute for Bird Populations’ MAPS program is a continent-wide effort to assess and track vital rates and population dynamics of North American landbirds in order to inform conservation decisions. Both citizen-science and peer reviewed “State of the Birds” reports reveal declines in many of our characteristic birds. Since 1989, MAPS volunteers have collected data aimed at documenting trends and providing critical information on more than 200 species. More than 500 stations, each following the same set of protocols and methods, are run during the breeding season. While the most urgent attention may be paid to our rapidly declining species at risk, the importance of “keeping common species common” is a focal point of the program. Be sure to attend the talk and learn how well our birdcount monitoring techniques match up with MAPS!