I think your first two choices are good ones, Mike. I think these censuses
will have to be done by song, not sight. Both Swainson's Thrush and Willow
Flycatcher should be easy to monitor by song, and people could do road
censuses (the censuses would have to be extensive) specifically oriented
toward these two species. They vocalize at somewhat different times of
day, but that's OK; there will be people with different preferences, or
there may be an optimal time when both can be heard.

I assume that any monitoring of Western Tanagers should be done through
Project Tanager, and it's a little more difficult song to learn than the
other two, which are really distinctive (assuming no confusion with Hermit
Thrush higher in the mountains). As you wrote, it/they should be species
that are essentially unmistakeable, to increase the number of people who
can be trained to recognize them. Beware of people with poor hearing; they
volunteer for these things! No offense meant to anyone; my hearing is
going, so I'm *not* volunteering for bird-song censuses.

Perhaps even more important, both the thrush and the flycatcher have been
considered "declining" in some circles, and both have fairly well-defined
habitat preferences, so their numbers can be compared with the abundance
and distribution of particular habitats. One is more of a forest species,
the other more of an open shrubby species, so you would be monitoring two
different habitat types simultaneously.

The critical thing is that the sampling procedure be set up so at least two
alternate hypotheses can be distinguished (otherwise we haven't learned
much): (1) the species' population is declining (or increasing, or stable)
because the habitat is declining (or increasing, or stable), a fairly
straightforward prediction; or (2) the population is changing independent
of the habitat frequency, which means something else (that we probably
don't understand) is affecting it.

Is there going to be money for this project? Or is it business as usual?

Dennis Paulson phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416