You dont have to be an archaeologist to get excited about Mesa Verde National Park. Ancestral Puebloan ruins, such as the spectacular Cliff Palace, a huge dwelling that contains 150 rooms and 23 kivas, and housed some 100 Native Americans centuries ago, could awe anyone with an interest in culture.
No doubt its ruins make Mesa Verde stand out among the United States national parks and monuments, but the park provides more than a place for people to absorb some of the Southwests amazing history.
Mesa Verde is listed on the National Audubon Societys list of Colorado Important Bird Areas.
It means it has been recognized as an area where birds of particular importance have been documented, said George San Miguel, natural resource manager for Mesa Verde National Park. The area is noted for certain birds. For instance, at Mesa Verde, were talking about the Mexican spotted owl, the golden eagle and the peregrine falcon. In addition to the birds of prey, we have those pinyon-juniper birds. Thats the reason why this area is noted for being an important bird area.
Two ongoing research programs Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship, and the Hummingbird Monitoring Network are assessing bird populations at the park. The programs help the National Park Service follow a 1928 congressional mandate to protect Mesa Verdes birds and the woodland habitats that support them.
In the Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship, or MAPS, program, workers hang nets in pinyon-juniper woodlands to capture and band birds.
This years netting was conducted May through July, and results havent been tabulated. The list of species banded in 2010 is enough to excite any respectable bird-watching enthusiast. Some examples are the blue-gray gnatcatcher, black-throated gray warbler, gray vireo, green-tailed towhee, juniper titmouse, Bewicks wren, Western bluebird, ash-throated flycatcher, lesser goldfinch, hairy woodpecker and mountain chickadee.
MAPS is a continentwide network involving hundreds of netting stations, according to The Institute for Bird Populations website, www.birdpop.org. Analysis of the banding data provides critical information relating to the ecology, conservation and management of North American landbird populations, and the factors responsible for changes in their populations.
Banding birds year after year in the same place, using the same techniques, can help show long-term population trends, San Miguel said.
There has been a decline in some songbirds since the MAPS program began, he said, highlighting the programs importance.
MAPS nets are about 10 meters long and about 10 feet high. The nets are hung between pinyon/juniper trees at Mesa Verde, and birds can safely fly into them and then be removed for banding and release back into the wild. The park has three MAPS banding areas, and each area has 13 nets.
For the Hummingbird Monitoring Network, or HMN, delicate nets shaped like a cylinder can be raised or lowered on a hummingbird lured to a bait station with sugar water.
The hummingbird requires a different type of process, San Miguel said. It is much more difficult to safely catch and handle them.
The rufous hummingbird, one species banded through the HMN, ranges from Canada to Central America. Rufous hummingbirds have seen a species-wide population decline of 58 percent in the past 40 years.
The rufous hummingbird is the common migrant, San Miguel said about birds that stop at Mesa Verde on their annual migrations. We get large numbers of them this time of year. The other one is the calliope (hummingbird). The calliopes are sort of an interior Northwest species, and the rufous is a coastal Northwest species, as far north as Alaska. Both species winter in Central America.
Two other hummingbird species, the black-chinned and broad-tailed, nest at Mesa Verde but also winter in Central America, San Miguel said.
They nest and lay eggs here, he said. While we handle the birds, sometimes you can detect they have an egg inside them.
Birds get released after theyre banded. Data gathered during the banding is sent to the U.S. Geological Surveys Bird Banding Laboratory in Maryland. The laboratory, a repository of information about birds that have been banded, is part of the larger North American Bird Banding Program, a joint effort by the USGS and Canadian Wildlife Service.
Mesa Verde also gathers information through point counts, which San Miguel described as bird watching on a systematic level. Instead of catching birds in nets and banding them, people working on point counts remain in one place and count birds.
We wont be able to band forever, but counting birds in the field is easier to do, San Miguel said. It takes more time, but more people can do that than can catch birds and band them.
Some people might wonder why a national park dedicated to cultural preservation would take on a bird-banding program. To give some perspective, in 2006, the United States had an estimated 48 million people age 16 or older who were birdwatchers, or birders. That same year, the National Park Service recorded 272 million recreation visits.
Thats a bit of an apples and oranges comparison because one person can record multiple recreation visits at National Park Service locations in one year. Additionally, the park service should help protect birds because they deserve a place to live, not because 48 million birders would like to jot a new species down in their log book. But it shows many Americans, who pay for the National Park Service, care about birds.
The bird banding programs at Mesa Verde only started a few years ago, so they havent yielded any definitive results, San Miguel said. Hopefully, in years to come, the park will get a better picture of bird populations and how the National Park Service can manage woodland habitats for the feathered friends that depend on Mesa Verde.
Sources: Mesa Verde National Park website, www.nps.gov/meve/index.htm; George San Miguel, natural resource manager, Mesa Verde National Park; U.S. Geological Service; U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
Russell Smyth is managing editor of the Cortez Journal. He can be reached at 564-6030 or russells@cortezjournal.com.