A bird survey method for Australian tropical savannas

Abstract

The tropical savanna of northern Australia is extensive and relatively homogenous compared to the open woodlands of temperate Australia. The avifauna of this biome is unevenly dispersed in the landscape. A standard count method for birds using a timed search along a 100-m transect with eight repeated counts per site over 4 days, has been used extensively over the past decade or more in these savannas, but its effectiveness has never been critically examined. We used data collected from across northern Queensland from 2004 to 2010, comprising 502 single-survey sites (each transect counted eight times) and 60 sites re-sampled four times from 2004 to 2008, to examine species records and accumul..