Happy New Year to all our readers! If you have not been following the news in Manitoba, you may have missed the Nature Manitoba piece on New Year Resolutions for environmental groups which also featured an entry from the IBA Program.

We even got a mention on the CBC news website.

Following the recent blog demonstrating how volunteer and blitz data is now beginning to bear fruit, offering insights into the significance of some of our bird concentrations in Manitoba, we thought it might be useful to provide a follow-up with suggestions for target groups and species of birds for which triggering an IBA total is both possible and plausible.

Before moving ahead it is worth recalling how IBAs are designated. Each IBA meets the Birdlife International standardised criteria. For a site to qualify as an IBA concentrations of birds must meet one of the criteria laid out in the table below. This table has been adapted and simplified from an explanation available on the IBA Canada website. Note that there are no restricted range or endemic species in Canada and we no longer use the national importance criteria for congregations of birds.

Criteria		Globally Threatened Species	Restricted-range Species	Biome-restricted Species	Congregations
		1	2	3	4
Global	A	A1  IUCN listed species,  Critically Endangered & Endangered = 1                             Vulnerable = 30                                                                               Static thresholds. Bird species with a natural breeding range less than 50,000 sq km	Bird species with a natural breeding range of less than 50,000 sq km . No species meet this criterion in Canada.	N/A	1% of species’ global abundance.
Continental	B	B1  IUCN listed species Near Threatened: non‐songbird = 30,                 Songbirds = 90. Static thresholds	N/A	N/A	1% of species’ North American abundance.
National	C	C1  COSEWIC listed species 1% of all listed species Threshold set based on species abundance within the region of listing.	N/A	N/A	N/A

The trigger for each of the species across Canada are set by the IBA Canada Technical Committee and below is a list of potential species for which it is very possible to meet these criteria on a day out at your IBA.

Remember these lists are updated regularly and there is a possibility that the birds you are counting, although not considered threatened at the time they are recorded, might become endangered in the future so please still record everything you encounter!

Globally Threatened Species

These are species present on the IUCN Red List which has just been updated. A globally threatened species is considered as any species listed on the high end of this list (Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, Extinct in the Wild, Extinct). The list of species in Manitoba present on the Red List currently can be found in this spreadsheet which I have condensed from the Birdlife International long list of c. 11,000 species. Fortunately we have very few species on the actual Red List in Manitoba and those that are present tend to be on the lower risk of extinction (apart from those which are likely to be extinct or extirpated from the province). The current list is:

• Eskimo Curlew (almost certainly extinct but still not officially confirmed so we keep it for posterity)
• Long-tailed Duck
• Rusty Blackbird
• Greater Prairie Chicken (Extirpated in the province)
• Horned Grebe
• Whooping Crane (occasional visitor but listed under the The Endangered Species and Ecosystems Act for Manitoba)

Continentally threatened species

These are species which are listed by the IUCN Red List as Near Threatened. This means that the species is undergoing sharp declines in population and range but not enough yet to be considered as threatened with extinction. Unfortunately, there are a number of Manitoban species present in this category.

• Common Eider
• Black Scoter
• Chimney Swift
• Yellow-billed Loon (occasional species)
• Piping Plover
• Red Knot
• Buff-breasted Sandpiper
• Semipalmated Sandpiper
• Red-headed Woodpecker
• Olive-sided Flycatcher
• Chestnut-collared Longspur
• Golden-winged Warbler

Nationally threatened species

These are species listed by COSEWIC as threatened in Canada. When counting any of these species it is important to remember that triggering a population threshold is going to be more straightforward for some species than others. For example, even though they are in steep decline, the overall breeding population in Canada of Red-necked Phalarope is 1.85 million  compared to 3600 Ferruginous Hawk. This would mean that to trigger the IBA threshold for each species one would need to locate 18,500 and 36 individuals respectively. The current avian list for Manitoba is:

• Baird’s Sparrow
• Bank Swallow
• Barn Swallow
• Bobolink
• Buff-breasted Sandpiper
• Burrowing Owl
• Canada Warbler
• Chestnut-collared Longspur
• Chimney Swift
• Common Nighthawk
• Eastern Whip Poor Will
• Eastern Wood Pewee
• Evening Grosbeak
• Ferruginous Hawk
• Golden-winged Warbler
• Horned Grebe
• Least Bittern
• Loggerhead Shrike
• Olive-sided Flycatcher
• Peregrine Falcon
• Piping Plover
• Red-headed Woodpecker
• Red Knot
• Red-necked Phalarope
• Ross’s Gull
• Rusty Blackbird
• Short-eared Owl
• Sprague’s Pipit
• Western Grebe
• Yellow Rail

Global and Continental Congregations

In simple terms, these thresholds are set for congregations of species which exceed 1% of their global or continental population at any time during their life-cycle. The following are examples of species – not listed under the above categories – for which it is very possible to meet these criteria in Manitoba. This list is not exhaustive and it goes without saying that collecting and entering data for all species is critical. Globally bird populations are in decline and it is conceivable that many more Manitoban species will be added to the IUCN Red List or COSEWIC in the future.

So here is a non-exhaustive list of species:

Colonial nesting birds

• American White Pelican
• Double-crested Cormorant
• Ring-billed Gull
• Herring Gull
• Franklin’s Gull
• Black Tern
• Caspian Tern
• Common Tern
• Forster’s Tern
• Arctic Tern (northern Manitoba)

Waterfowl

• Canada Goose
• Cackling Goose
• Snow Goose
• Ross’s Goose
• Tundra Swan
• Trumpeter Swan
• Canvasback
• Redhead
• Greater Scaup
• Lesser Scaup
• White-winged Scoter

Long-legged Waders

• White-faced Ibis
• Black-crowned Night Heron
• Great Blue Heron
• Great Egret
• Sandhill Crane (strictly speaking not a long-legged wader, but for these purposes we’ll include it here)

Grebes and Loons

• Red-throated Loon
• Red-necked Grebe
• Horned Grebe
• Eared Grebe
• Western Grebe

Shorebirds

Shorebirds are one of the more likely groups of birds for meeting the IBA thresholds. Shorebirds tend to gather in large concentrations during migration (call it safety in  numbers) and this combined with the fact that shorebird habitat is often seasonal means that this is a group where it is certainly possible to locate 1% of the global or continental populations of a species in a single area on a single day. It goes without saying that concentrations of shorebirds are worth targeting during monitoring trips to your local IBA.

Rare Breeders

Some rare breeders for North America do appear in Manitoba, especially around Churchill and the Hudson Bay Lowlands. For example, Ross’s Gull is such a rare breeder in North America that even a single breeding pair triggers the continental congregation. To qualify the species must be a breeding species (so a random Eurasian Common Crane turning up in Churchill would not count). However there is a small breeding population of Little Gull in Churchill which would count.