Birds After the Fire: What Changed in Strawberry Creek, Great Basin National Park

The Cassin's finch, one of the species that increased after the Strawberry Creek fire. Image from the National Park Service's page

What happens to birds after a major wildfire? In Great Basin National Park, the Strawberry Creek watershed — which burned in 2016 — is starting to answer.

Before-and-after counts

In 2005, long before the fire, the park set up two breeding bird transects in the watershed:

Each follows Great Basin Bird Observatory methods: ten points spaced 250 meters apart. Starting near sunrise in June, a surveyor walks the route and counts birds for ten minutes at each point. Before the fire there were six riparian and seven mountain shrub surveys; since the fire, two more on each route, done the same way.

Early results

The changes are dramatic, especially along the stream.

Only half the mountain shrub transect burned, but it changed too. With many shrubs burned and grasses taking their place, Brewer's sparrows and green-tailed towhees declined — notable because those two species account for the largest numbers of birds there.

What's next

More breeding bird surveys and analysis are planned, and experienced birders are invited to help.

Sources

Based on Gretchen Baker, "Post-fire Bird Recovery in Strawberry Creek," The Midden, Winter 2018, National Park Service, Great Basin National Park; a work of the United States government in the public domain.