1/3 of songbirds in some national parks in decline, researcher says

Songbirds can help bring our national parks to life, but a long-term monitoring program has found that some bird species are in trouble.

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It'sa warning sign for the overall health of ourparks, according toDerek Petersen, who assesses the health ofsongbirds for Banff,YohoandKootenaynational parks.

"It's actually the 'canary in the coal mine' type of approach," hesaid.

"It gives us a snapshot generally of what's happening with species diversity and abundance for our forest songbirds across our national parks."

Early analysisshows that a third ofthe species that livein the areas under study areshowing a decline.

The research on songbirds involves collectingdata at about 475 sites within the parks in themontaneand up tothetreelinein thesubalpine. At each site,bird recording hardware is used to capture bird-call songs, which are then sent for analysis.

From that information, researchers can find out how many species were at the site and what kinds. After that, they figure out trends.

One of thespeciesthat is threatened is the olive-sided flycatcher.

Tiny bird faces many challenges

"It covers an 8,000-kilometremigratory route from northern Canada down to South America to the Andes Mountains. So it's obviously subjected to a lot of different kinds of potential impacts on its wintering grounds but also on its migratory route before arriving back in Canada," Petersen said.

That means the tiny bird has a lot to cope with in its winter home, as well as its journey back to itssummer home in the parks everythingfrom climate change to changing habitat conditions to changes to its food supply,he says.

For instance, the flycatcher isan "aerial insectivore"so it relies heavily on flying insects to keep going.

"And we see that those flying insects are impacted by everything from chemicals and climate change to habitat conditions to weather variables. So it's potentially subjected to a lot of variables within the course of a year that could be impacting their population status," Petersen said.

It's not all bad news though, as some bird populations are actually seeing an increase in numbers.

"Birds are important. People take them a bit for granted on the landscape," Petersen said.

"They'reour major terrestrial species within the parks, so they're very important to keep, and we will continue to monitor them and hopefully we can ensure that we can keep themon the landscape."