Habitat management work at Elm Hill Wildlife Sanctuary is underway! Elm Hill is our demonstration site for our Forestry for the Birds program, which we’re using to exhibit techniques for improving bird habitat with sustainable forestry. Invasive plant removal has begun, and forestry operations will commence in a few short months. Following years of fundraising, […]
Our bird conservation staff spent the past week collecting data at Elm Hill Wildlife Sanctuary, our demonstration site for Foresters for the Birds. Since we’re using this site to show how responsible forest management can enrich bird habitat, we need before-and-after data to compare changes in vegetation and bird diversity. Birds See Forests For The […]
In order to characterize the bird community at Elm Hill, point count surveys were performed at 24 locations within forested areas of the sanctuary. During a ten minute period, the species of each individual bird is recorded, as detected by sight or sound, within 50 meters. This gives us information on the abundance of each […]
Past blog posts about our Elm Hill Sanctuary – a Foresters for the Birds demonstration site—have largely discussed the planning of forestry practices to manage and enhance bird habitat. We kicked the project off last fall and winter, when our migratory birds were hundreds or thousands of miles away. So, until spring arrived, we were […]
Mass Audubon’s Foresters for the Birds program provides assistance for private landowners to manage their forests for bird habitat. Empowering private landowners is important because about 75% of Massachusetts’ forests are privately owned, and management on these lands will be necessary to address conservation needs on a landscape scale. To promote the program, and to […]
Birds that breed in young or recently disturbed forests are a conservation priority in Massachusetts. Sharp declines of these species, such as the Eastern Towhee and Brown Thrasher, have been linked to habitat loss due to changes in the frequency of these natural and anthropogenic disturbance regimes. For example, fire and flooding have been suppressed, […]
Human activity has caused white-tailed deer numbers to swell beyond sustainable levels in the Northeast, which spells trouble for birds that nest in the forest understory. At certain Mass Audubon sanctuaries, staff scientists monitor deer density to keep tabs on their ecosystem impacts. Deer eat some birds out of house and home Deer are “ecosystem […]
The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation has funded Mass Audubon for three years of “Climate-Smart Forestry.” This program is a collaborative effort between Mass Audubon and the New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) to support landowners in making climate-friendly forestry management decisions. This is especially important in Massachusetts, where forests cover 60% of the total land area and […]
“Species extinctions have defined the global biodiversity crisis, but extinction begins with loss in abundance of individuals” —Rosenberg et al., Decline of the North American Avifauna (2019) So begins the first comprehensive review of bird population trends since the mid-20th century. Summaries of the study are available via the New York Times and NPR. The […]
“Whe-peet!” Hearing the explosive, snappy squeak of an Acadian Flycatcher at a Mass Audubon sanctuary would have been a huge surprise, were it not for the species’ ongoing shift northward into Massachusetts. Stumbling on this denizen of the American South used to be a downright rare occurrence here, but the northern edge of its summer […]