Birds of the Euclid Creek Watershed

The Euclid Creek Watershed is a small, highly urbanized watershed of 24 square miles.

How many species of birds could this area support?

What kind of bird habitats can this mostly urbanized landscape support?

Which ecological groups (guilds) of birds could live there?

Could migratory bird species with declining populations find suitable nesting habitats in this area?

How do different types of land use impact bird populations?

What can we do to increase, or at least preserve, the density and diversity of birds in the Euclid Creek watershed?

To answer these questions, Kirtland Bird Club, in collaboration with Friends of Euclid Creek, conducted a bird survey on the watershed.

Bird Guilds

Guilds are groups of bird species in a community that exploit the same set of resources in a similar manner, but are not necessarily closely related taxonomically. We grouped bird species in to guilds according to their habitat preferences. Below are the guilds and their members:

Birds and land use

How does our use of land affect the birds? Which types of land use are the most suitable for them? What combinations of land use types are the best at support species diversity? In an attempt to answer these questions we analyzed the relationship between land use and bird population focusing on guilds, migratory patterns, and general density and diversity.

Types of land use are following: 1 - Single Family; 2- Two Families; 3 - Multi-Family; 4 - Retail Commercial; 5 – Office; 6 – Industrial; 7 - Recreation, Park, Playground; 8 – Institutional; 9 – Utilities; 10 – Railroads; 11- Vacant; 12-Agricultural; ROW- Right of Way. Graduate color from gray to black shows density of houses.

On this map you can see that woodland birds mostly inhabit park areas (7) and vacant territories (11)

Urban birds have a much wider distribution and mostly live in heavily populated residential areas.

Further analysis shows that the highest diversity of guilds can be found in parks and recreational lands as well as on vacant lands. Such areas are especially important for woodland birds, which are rare in other types of land use.

Most of the members of the grassland guild are not very common in North Eastern Ohio, but in the Euclid Creek watershed they inhabit parks and recreational lands, and are also found on utility type land which includes the big open grassy areas of county airports.

Successional birds prefer parks and vacant land but they also inhabit utilities areas and residential areas with single-family houses. The Institutional type of land use seems to be more suitable than other types to forest age birds, but we have only 9 observation points on this land use type, which makes it statistically insignificant.

Wetland birds are also most abundant on park and recreational land and on vacant land and are most uncommon in residential and commercial areas.

Finally, urban birds are almost equally abundant in all types of land use.

Our next question was, how are migratory birds distributed in the area? Which land use types do they prefer ?

All observed species have been divided into 3 groups by distance of migration. The Neotropical Migrant group contains species wintering in tropical Central and South America. Local birds are those that do not leave the area. Shorter Distance Migrants are birds migrating to spend the winter in a warmer climate but do not travel as far as the tropics. Neotropical Migrant birds are the group that shows the most serious decline in the last few decades, and thus needs the most protection of their breeding habitats.

In the table below you can see which birds belongs to which migration type and how many individuals of each species were counted during the bird survey.

Migration Types of birds observed in the Euclid Creek watershed in June 2003

Below is a map of Neotropical Migrants distribution within Euclid Creek Watershed

Further analysis of migratory bird populations show that the most valuable habitats for Neotropical Migrants are parks and recreational areas, followed by vacant areas, which usually have abundant vegetation and places for nesting and foraging. Shorter distance migrants also prefer parks and vacant areas Local birds are mostly distributed between land use types proportionally to total population density

What we learned:

1. The highly urbanized Euclid Creek watershed could support relatively high bird species diversity.

2. The mosaic of land use types can provide habitats for birds woodland, wetland, forest age, sucessional vegetation, grassland and urban urban.

3. Several types of land use are suitable for the nesting of neotropical migrants with declining populatons.

4. In order to support the biodiversity of the bird population in the Euclid Creek watershed it is very important to keep and develop parks and recreational areas and to keep some amount of vacant lands.

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to the observers from Kirtland Bird Club who performed the point counts of the birds in the Euclid Creek Watershed:
Steve & Beth Cagan ; Lisa Chapman; Leo Deininger; Mickey Lewin; Andy Lihani; Paula Lozano; Gary Neuman; Marcia Polevoi; Mary Anne & Tom Romito; Julie West.

Thank you to Watershed coordinator Lynn Garrity for providing maps and help on working with them.

© 2006 Anna Kozlenko. All rights reserved.