Category Archives: Working Landscapes

Save Bobolinks This Year Through The Bobolink Project

Applications from interested farmers have been rolling in as Bobolinks have been starting to make their way northward from South America. What better way to welcome them back than protecting habitat where they can safely raise their young? People who support The Bobolink Project do just that.

The Bobolink Project is an innovative model that was designed to connect conservation-minded donors with farmers who want to protect birds on their fields, but need a little financial help to do so.

You can save Bobolinks

The number of acres The Bobolink Project protects is directly tied to how much we can raise in donations. You can support this work and protect privately-owned habitat for grassland birds by donating to the project and spreading the word to all of your networks. This project simply wouldn’t exist without people, like you, who care deeply for birds.

The Bobolink Project saves hundreds of Bobolinks each year. Let’s make 2021 just as successful!

How it works

Interested farmers apply to The Bobolink Project with a dollar bid/acre that is low enough to be competitive but also sufficient to provide them with some financial help to offset the loss of income from the hay that would otherwise be cut. Grassland sizes must be a minimum of 20 acres to be considered. At the same time we accept donations from Bobolink-loving donors and pool them until we’re ready to make decisions in mid-April.

In order to select which farms will be included we do a uniform reverse price auction, which is described on our website in more detail. The number of acres that we can protect is determined by how much we can raise each year.

Once we determine which farms will be selected, we draw up legal contracts with those farmers and wait for the Bobolinks to arrive, start building nests, and raise their families.

Bobolink (female) on one of the fields protected by The Bobolink Project in 2020, Photo and video above by Allan Strong

Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: The Woodcocks of Alewife Reservation

American Woodcocks appear to be thriving at the Alewife Reservation in Cambridge, an urban wild sandwiched between office complexes and a subway garage. Despite the myriad dangers of city life, up to a dozen woodcocks perform their aerial mating displays over Alewife every March.

Resilience against the odds

Alewife is awash in threats to these hapless birds. Peregrine Falcons occasionally snag woodcocks in midair as they hunt along the clifflike walls of a brutalist-era parking garage. The expansive glass façade of the recently-expanded office park looms over the adjacent greenspace, causing fatal window collisions. Feral cats prowl around the urban wetland’s thickets. Heavy metals and pollutants from long ago still linger in the soil.

At Alewife, small patches of woodlands, wetlands, and fields persist amid urban infrastructure and new development.

And yet, at least a handful of woodcocks return here every year. In early spring, they give their explosive, nasal calls at dusk, leap into the sky, and twist and turn in midair to attract a mate. Once paired off, they nest and raise young in nearby woodlands.

Is it a trap?

It’s worth considering that this urban wild might be what’s known as an “population sink,” or “ecological trap.”

An ecological trap is any low-quality habitat where more birds die than can successfully reproduce, but which attracts birds even when there’s safer places for them nearby. Traps can appear to have a stable population of birds, when in fact most of those birds die before being replaced as more birds are lured in from safe areas.

A population sink, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily attract birds more than areas with suitable habitat. Rather, birds end up there as “overflow,” when better territories are fully occupied or made inaccessible. Sinks don’t cause as steep declines, but do put a cap on the birds that can successfully reproduce in an area.

So, it’s entirely possible that Alewife isn’t doing the woodcock population any favors. No woodcock nests have been found in the area, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re failing to reproduce.

Brushy fields are all you need

Whether or not Alewife is a net plus or minus for its resident woodcocks, data from the rest of the country show that habitat availability is the main factor limiting woodcock abundance.

The strange, lumpy, long-billed form of an American Woodcock (Scolopax minor). Photo: Will Freedberg

Woodcocks love fields with low, woody brush, and adjacent mature forest. They display in springtime over open, grassy areas, but need some cover—ideally patches of shrubs or grass 2’-5’ high—for shelter. They use forest to forage during the rest of the year, especially when they’re raising young.

Without disturbance, either by fire, mowing, or agriculture, brushy fields revert to forest in a couple of decades. This is the story of woodcock habitat across Massachusetts: most ex-farmland has reverted to forest. Remaining fields are farmed more intensively, leaving less and less brushy patches and edge habitat, and fallow fields are becoming rarer.

Mass Audubon’s Foresters for the Birds program is emphasizing the value of young forest and shrubland habitat for birds. By educating foresters and landowners on bird-friendly forestry practices, we’re trying to create more habitat for woodcocks and other young forest specialists.

Mass Audubon works on “Climate-Smart Forestry”

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 much of it is privately owned. 

The Climate-Smart Forestry project is divided into three main “tasks.” The first is to update the state’s Forest Stewardship Plan to include a climate component. This is a voluntary program where landowners work with consulting foresters to create a ten-year management plan. Future plans will explain how a landowner’s forest fits into the larger climate change picture, and will nicely complement our Foresters for the Bird Program.

Mass Audubon Central/Western Regional Scientist Tom Lautzenheiser educates a group of forestry professionals about sustainable forest management at Mass Audubon’s Elm Hill Sanctuary.

The second task is encouraging municipalities to participate in carbon offset markets. Forest landowners receive payments from the California Compliance Offset Program for carbon stored in the trees on their land. In exchange, these landowners reduce clear-cutting and lengthen their harvest rotations to maintain a specified level of carbon storage over time spans ranging from 40 – 100 years.  

The third task is to update the Best Management Practices (BMPs) for timber harvesting to address the reality of climate-driven changes in harvesting conditions and promote climate-friendly practices. This will be completed by NEFF, which currently provides BMPs designed to reduce erosion and minimize damage to wetlands and soils during harvest operations. The updates will ensure that projected changes due to climate change are reflected in BMPs. 

The project is led by Jeff Ritterson and Josh Rapp in Conservation Science. Jeff currently leads our Foresters for the Birds program and is developing a project for Bird Friendly Maple Syrup. Josh has 15 years of experience in forest ecology research with an emphasis on climate change impacts on forests. Tom Lautzenheiser, who led the effort to enroll Mass Audubon lands in the California carbon market, will contribute heavily to the carbon offset component. Alexandra Vecchio, Climate Change Program Director, will contribute her experience in building climate resilience at the municipal scale, as well as expertise in climate change communications and education for the various outreach components of this project. 

The Bobolink Project 2019: End of Season Report

© Allan Strong

The Bobolinks are making their way south to their wintering home in South America and there are more Bobolinks doing so thanks to The Bobolink Project. THANK YOU to all of our donors and participating landowners for making 2019 another successful year for Bobolinks!

Male Bobolink with food for nestlings © Allan Strong

The numbers are in!

This year The Bobolink project protected 928 acres of hayfields for grassland birds. On these fields we estimated that there were 227 Bobolink pairs and 633 young fledged. Those estimated 633 fledglings would not have survived without the help of The Bobolink Project!

For those of you familiar with last year’s numbers, this year’s numbers don’t sound nearly as good. Bobolink numbers were down (633 fledglings this year vs. 1,027 fledglings in 2018) despite us protecting about the same number of acres. Why? The answer is, we don’t really know! But here are some possible explanations to consider:

  • Perhaps this observed decline is not real. Each year we base our calculation of fledgling number on the number of breeding males which are estimated at the start of the nesting season. This is a difficult number to collect, since we always prefer to spend our Bobolink Project donations on enrolling more acres rather than hiring field crews to do careful censuses of participating fields. In similar year-to-year bird monitoring efforts, for example the USGS Breeding Bird Survey, numerical estimates are typically averaged across several years in order to calculate trends, rather than making comparisons from one year to the next.
  • However, 11 of the farms enrolled this year were also enrolled in 2018, so maybe there was a decline. There are several possible causes of decline:
    • Fewer birds returned from their South American wintering grounds.
    • Unusually wet spring weather may have delayed the onset of nesting, thus causing lower estimates of breeding birds.
    • The wet spring weather may have improved nesting conditions throughout the region, causing some of the birds that previously nested on Bobolink Project fields to nest on a different field.
    • Fields could be degrading due to weather conditions or other factors, making them less suitable for the birds.

Because of these—and other—uncertainties, the most reliable metric to us in evaluating The Bobolink Project’s success is the number of acres protected. This number increased significantly between 2017 and 2018 and held steady this year.

And don’t forget—The Bobolink Project protected fields are home to other birds too. Savannah Sparrows, Eastern Meadowlarks, and other birds were also seen on the fields.

Savannah Sparrow © Allan Strong

2020 season will be here before we know it

The 2020 season may seem a long way off, but the sooner we can start collecting donations, the better. This project is only as successful as the amount of donations it receives from people like you. Donate now >

Foresters for the Birds: Starting work at Elm Hill

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, planning, site preparation, data collection, and a minor setback, it’s all finally coming together.

Eastern Towhees like young forests and dense scrubby habitat. Photo by: Marco Jona

Bird-Friendly Forestry

Foresters for the Birds works with private landowners and consulting foresters to create and enhance bird habitat using sustainable forestry practices. In order to lead by example, Mass Audubon decided to showcase such practices at Elm Hill. Besides creating great habitat for birds, the site will be used to educate and engage with landowners, conservation organizations, state agencies, forestry professionals, and the general public.  In fact, we’ve already hosted a handful of events at Elm Hill, attracting about 100 people so far.

Young Forests and Tree Diversity Are Key

Following a Foresters for the Birds management plan, this round of management will create about 30 acres of young forest, a habitat type crucial to a group of birds categorically in decline, such as Eastern Towhees and Chestnut-sided Warblers. We will also improve tree species diversity in about 100 acres of older forests, and encourage layers of shrubs and saplings to benefit species such as Wood Thrushes and Black-throated Blue Warblers.

Creating Climate-Resilient Forests

Climate change has already started to affect Massachusetts forests, which complicates management strategies for bird habitat. The ranges of plant and insect species that certain birds depend on are shifting, and some are inevitably less resilient to an unstable climate. Bearing this in mind, we worked with the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS) to ensure that our management actions at Elm Hill were climate-smart. With their help, we’re identifying opportunities to adapt the forest– and the birds it supports– to future climate conditions.

Please stay tuned for opportunities to visit Elm Hill, where detailed discussions of our bird habitat and climate adaption actions can take place. There’s much more to it beyond what can be communicated in a short blog post!

Studying Forest Structure At Elm Hill

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 Trees

The physical structure of a forest directly affects which birds are found there. The amount of vegetation near the forest floor (or “understory”) changes whether or not the forest can host a whole suite species that nest near the ground, like Ovenbirds and Black-throated Blue Warblers. Forests with open midstories (the layer of vegetation between 5–50 feet off the ground) attract flycatching birds like Eastern Wood-Pewees, but dense midstories appeal to Wood Thrushes and Canada Warblers.

The goal of our work at Elm Hill is to demonstrate how every forest species has its own habitat preferences, and how thoughtful land management can create habitat for declining species. Since three quarters of Massachusetts’ forests are in private hands, it’s critical to make these lands as hospitable as possible to wildlife.

Collecting Vegetation Data

A data sheet we use for recording information about trees and forest structure at Elm Hill.

Before we alter any habitat at Elm Hill, we’re recording these factors at sites where we’ve previously done bird surveys:

  • Total woody biomass (i.e., the average size and number of trees in a given area)
  • Tree species makeup (i.e., which trees are there, and how many of each)
  • Canopy density (i.e., the amount of cover provided by leaves in the treetops)
  • Sapling density (i.e., the number of young trees from around 1–6 feet tall)
  • Coarse woody debris (i.e., the number of logs and slash piles on the ground)

We outline a 400-square-meter plot with ropes at every site to make sure we collect data from the same area of land each time. This works pretty well until somebody tangles the ropes:

Jeff tangled the ropes. It definitely was not me.

While measuring trees, logs, and saplings is straightforward, you might wonder how researchers measure canopy density— and the instrument for this is quite cool. A spherical densiometer (pictured below) condenses a wide view of the canopy into a small image (much like a fisheye camera lens) with a grid over it. By estimating the percentage of each grid square occupied by leaves or trunks (and adding them up, and taking readings in each cardinal direction), we have a standardized and simple way of measuring canopy density. This also works as a proxy for determining how much light reaches the forest floor.

A spherical densiometer, used for measuring the amount of leaves in the treetops.

Long-term Goals

After foresters have cleared the woods of invasive species and created a variety of spatial habitat types, we’ll be able to show what changes this brings to Elm Hill’s bird species.

Elm Hill contains mostly 70–90-year-old forest, like much of Massachusetts. We’ll manage parts of the sanctuary for birds that prefer young forest, which are in trouble statewide, and in other part’s we’ll try to mimic old-growth forest conditions, which would take over a century to emerge naturally. Hopefully, we can then use this site as a physical example of how foresters and landowners can improve bird habitat on the properties they manage.

 

 

Two Poems for Bobolinks: Dickinson and Bryant

Mass Audubon’s Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary: a few miles from where Emily Dickinson was inspired by Bobolinks- which have returned to the property thanks to careful stewardship.

References to Bobolinks abound in poetry from 19th-century New England. Massachusetts authors drew inspiration from local birds for a host of reasons, not least because they saw local species as uniquely American subjects (as opposed to, say, the European Nightingale). Bobolinks and Meadowlarks helped distinguish their work from other English-language poets’, and perhaps more importantly, ground it in a sense of place.

Bobolinks were also particularly an familiar and evocative sight through the 1800s and into the past century. Widespread low-impact agriculture provided habitat for field-loving Bobolinks, which don’t mind living near humans as long as their nests are undisturbed. Conspicuous and bold, Bobolinks became an icon of the countryside, and a cultural touchstone for many.

Emily Dickinson, one of rural Massachusetts most-celebrated poets, took a particular liking to them. Bobolinks recurred as a motif in more than 20 of her works. Dickinson often made the birds into rowdy or joyfully anti-authoritarian figures, as here:

 

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.

–Emily Dickinson

 

Loosely interpreted, the poem emphasizes finding joy in nature and in the everyday. Here, the Bobolink is part of Dickinson’s everyday “Heaven” on earth; its song part of her quiet resistance to organized religion. Dickinson had studied religion in a seminary, but perhaps tellingly, dropped out after a year.

Dickinson always ascribes human qualities to the bird to illustrate a point—whether as a “Sexton” (someone who rings the bells of a church) calling her attention to beauty in nature, or in other poems, as a disruptive “Rowdy of the Meadow.”

Other poets, however, grounded poems in Bobolinks’ natural history and biology, although few connected them with complex societal themes as adroitly as Dickinson. William Cullen Bryant, for example, managed to accurately convey key points about Bobolinks’ seasonal behavior (despite leaning pretty heavily on twee personification and cutesy metaphors):

 

Merrily swinging on briar and weed,
Near to the nest of his little dame,
Over the mountain-side or mead,
Robert of Lincoln is telling his name:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Snug and safe is that nest of ours,
Hidden among the summer flowers;
Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln is gaily drest,
Wearing a bright black wedding-coat;
White are his shoulders, and white his crest;
Hear him call in his merry note:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Look what a nice new coat is mine,
Sure there was never a bird so fine.
Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln’s Quaker wife,
Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings,
Passing at home a patient life,
Broods in the grass while her husband sings:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Brood, kind creature; you need not fear
Thieves and robbers while I am here.
Chee, chee, chee.

Modest and shy as a nun is she;
One weak chirp is her only note,
Braggart and prince of braggarts is he,
Pouring boasts from his little throat:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Never was I afraid of man;
Catch me cowardly knaves, if you can !
Chee, chee, chee.

Six white eggs on a bed of hay,
Flecked with purple, a pretty sight!
There as the mother sits all day,
Robert is singing with all his might:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Nice good wife, that never goes out,
Keeping house while I frolic about.
Chee, chee, chee.

Soon as the little ones chip the shell,
Six wide mouths are open for food;
Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well,
Gathering seeds for the hungry brood.
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
This new life is likely to be
Hard for a gay young fellow like me.
Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln at length is made
Sober with work, and silent with care;
Off is his holiday garment laid,
Half forgotten that merry air:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Nobody knows but my mate and I
Where our nest and our nestlings lie.
Chee, chee, chee.

Summer wanes; the children are grown;
Fun and frolic no more he knows;
Robert of Lincoln’s a humdrum crone;
Off he flies, and we sing as he goes :
“Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
When you can pipe that merry old strain,
Robert of Lincoln, come back again.
Chee, chee, chee.

– William Cullen Bryant

 

Bryant’s poem draws a parallel between the Bobolink’s behavioral changes over a breeding season and a human who is burdened with work and worry as they age. But the poem is essentially fanciful, and its goal is mainly to describe these seasonal arcs with flowery language. Still, it’s a rare poem for weaving in a significant amount of natural history.

One could say that Dickinson’s and Bryant’s poems have different goals. Dickinson uses the Bobolink as a device to illustrate the experience of finding joy and religion in nature; she ascribes human qualities to a bird to tell us something about ourselves. Bryant’s poem ascribes human qualities to a bird, but more to illustrate points about the bird itself.

Which poem do you prefer? Do you know of any contemporary poems about Bobolinks—or maybe have written one yourself? Share with us below in the comments!

You can also learn more about (currently-living) Bobolinks and how to protect them at Mass Audubon’s Bobolink Project website.

 

A Final Push For Bobolinks In 2018

 

A Bobolink in a field with Oxalis (wild clover) and Vicia (cow vetch). Photo by Allan Strong.

The Bobolink Project is almost ready to go! With one week left for donations, we’re just $2000 away from protecting 1,000 acres of grassland bird habitat this year. That would be nearly twice as many acres as when the project started! With this year’s increase in farmers applying to protect habitat on their land, we need to ask for more help to accept as many applicants as we can.

The Bobolink Project works through a reverse auction, meaning farmers name the lowest per-acre price they’ll accept in exchange for a delay in mowing their fields. We select the lowest bids and work our way up the list, making agreements with more farms until we reach the limit of our Bobolink donations for the year.

Delaying hayfield mowing is a tried-and-true way of protecting Bobolinks. Hayfields provide an excellent surrogate for the tall grassland Bobolinks require to nest- such an excellent surrogate that Bobolinks can rarely differentiate wild grassland from agricultural hayfields. But when fields are mown before the end of nesting season, eggs and nestlings are destroyed during the harvest. Unfortunately, early-season hay is protein-rich and valuable, and some working farms cannot afford to delay mowing and drive down the value of their hay.

That’s where we come in—we use donations to cover the cost of mowing later, essentially buying the birds time to raise their young and move out.

Every donation directly protects acreage of fields and their resident Bobolinks. Please help us make it to our goal of 1,000 acres this year!

Another successful year for The Bobolink Project

Bobolink © Allan Strong

We are proud to share a final report on what The Bobolink Project accomplished during the summer of 2017. But before we share the results, we first and foremost thank our donors. With their financial support, conservation interest, and promotional efforts, The Bobolink Project would not exist. This is very much a grassroots conservation effort—pun intended—and we are deeply appreciative of our donors’ support.

We also thank the farmers who applied to and participated in the project. Without them the habitat for grassland birds would not exist. We are glad that they are conscious of the birds on their fields and that they are willing to participate in a solution that allows them to grow a “crop” of grassland birds without compromising their financial stability.

Donations and Farms Enrolled

In the months leading up to the 2017 field season, we raised just over $38,000 to support the project’s objectives, and 99% of this donation pool was given directly to the participating farmers. Based on the fixed-price reverse auction, the final bid that was accepted from the farmers was $60/acre.

With this financial support we were able to enroll about 630 acres distributed among 17 farms—13 located in Vermont, two in Massachusetts, one in New Hampshire, and one in New York.

Bobolink (female) © Allan Strong

Successful Breeding Pairs and Fledglings

The project state coordinators surveyed the fields this summer to measure the success of the program for grassland birds. They estimated that there were about 294 pairs of Bobolinks on the enrolled fields. Using what we think is a conservative estimate of 2.79 fledglings per breeding pair, we estimate that 820 Bobolink young were produced as a result of the project’s 2017 efforts.

The number of fledglings nearly doubled from 2016 to 2017 even though the amount of protected acreage increased by about 20%. The huge increase in fledgling numbers is due in large part to one of the participating farms in particular, which consisted of 146 acres with many nesting Bobolinks.

The 2017 breeding season was also especially wet in many parts of the northeast. Increased amounts of rain typically means more invertebrates (e.g., insects) for Bobolinks to eat. This enhancement of breeding conditions could have influenced the higher number of Bobolink pairs and fledglings estimated this year.

What We Left On the Table

Another important aspect of this project concerns what we were unable to accomplish.

In 2017, we had to reject applications from 19 farmers who had submitted bids that exceeded what we were able to support from our donation pool. In other words, about 615 acres of offered habitat was lost because we needed more donations.

Of course, it’s wonderful that we succeeded in protecting 634 acres of grassland bird habitat! But the fact that we had to “leave on the table” a total of 615 acres—land that otherwise might have been protected—is a sobering thought. Remember, the more donations we collect, the more land we can protect from haying. We hope this reminder motivates new and previous donors alike to support the Bobolink Project in 2018.

In fact, contributions toward next year’s efforts can be made now—even while the birds themselves are busily heading toward South America! It’s never too early to make a donation, and your gift will be set aside for the 2018 nesting season.

To get the latest information follow us on Facebook, check out the website, or subscribe to our e-newsletter.

Surveying Wildlife at Elm Hill

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 species and the overall species richness (number of species).  As is typical, each location was surveyed 3 times, and this yielded 789 detections of birds representing 51 species!

As discussed in previous blog posts about the development of a Foresters for the Birds demonstration site at Elm Hill, these surveys were done to establish a pre-management baseline, which will then be compared with conditions after management.  Wait a minute… 51 species!?!  Is management really necessary?

51 species may sound like a lot, leading to the conclusion that the forests are already providing good habitat.  That may be true, but for what species?  Upon closer examination of the data, we can see that many of the species we recorded (e.g., nuthatches, titmice, and catbirds) are quite common, thriving in our woodlands and backyards alike.  Others, such as Barred Owls, naturally occur at low densities, so we wouldn’t expect to find many of them.

It’s those species that we conspicuously did not detect, or recorded very few of, that we are managing for.  For example Black-throated Blue Warbler and Ruffed Grouse were not recorded.  These species rely on some degree of disturbance to the canopy, creating vegetative growth in the understory and a mix of tree ages in the forest.  These are conditions that can be created through sustainable forestry, and it would not be unreasonable to expect these, and other species of conservation concern, to show up at Elm Hill after appropriate habitat management.  Time will tell.

Please consider supporting our bird conservation work by making a donation today. Thank you!