Black Oystercatcher Population – Pacific Rim

This program is used to track Black Oystercatcher (Haematopus bachmani) population trend, local abundance, and annual survivorship. Bird banding, re-sighting visits and nesting population counts occur annually in the spring, with banding occurring in May to July since 2007, and nesting population counts occurring in late May or early June since 2008. The measurement for this species represents a complete annual census of birds nesting at key nesting locations across the park and is standardized across the three National Parks in the Coastal British Columbia bioregion with links to monitoring programs taking place in Alaska and Washington State. Completely dependent on marine shorelines for its food and nesting, these monogamous and long-lived birds establish well-defined breeding pairs and occupy composite feeding and nesting territories year after year, often along low-sloping gravel or rocky shorelines where intertidal prey are abundant. Black oystercatchers are generally considered to be good measures of quality of the rocky intertidal habitat in the North and North-West Pacific Region of North America.