3.3 Birds
• Support land trusts and conservation easements as a means to protect amphibian habitat.
• Utilize programs such as the Wildlife Conservation Lands Program and others to pro- tect, manage, and restore habitat on private lands.
• Support citizen science and volunteer eforts to monitor species and habitats.
• Utilize partnerships and research collaborations with local universities and education programs to implement conservation, research, and management actions.
• Develop education, outreach, and technical guidance programs for the public.
3.3 Birds 3.3.1 Introduction
North Carolina hosts more than 460 species of birds (Piephof et al. 2013; CBC 2014) , of which roughly 360 species are seen at some point during the year. Managers and researchers have better knowledge and understanding of many of our bird species compared to other taxo- nomic groups, largely because of the popularity of bird-watching and subsequent ability to collect data from researchers and the public alike. Citizen science is a continuing force in the collection of bird data (e.g., eBird, Nest Watch, Christmas Bird Count, Great Backyard Bird Count, and Yard Map). Much of the population trend data driving conservation priori- ties are derived from nationwide citizen science programs like the USGS Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) (Sauer et al. 2013) and the Audubon Christmas Bird Count (CBC) (Dunn et al. 2005) .
Te conservation needs of birds in North Carolina center mainly on habitat manage- ment, restoration, and protection, especially of spruce–fr forest, bottomland hardwood forest, quality early successional habitats, Longleaf Pine communities, riparian and bottomland habitats, and coastal beach and estuarine habitats. Community descriptions are provided in Chapter 4. Information on pelagic bird species is provided in Section 3.11.
A list of bird SGCN is provided in Table 3.7 and the Taxa Team evaluation results can be found in Appendix G. Habitat associations for these species can be found in Appendix H. Northern Saw-whet Owl (NCWRC)
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2015 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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