tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44872491142092473702024-03-04T23:20:19.367-08:00Birding on the FarmMichael Godfreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04612217373851849969noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4487249114209247370.post-5931589351591223112014-02-18T17:28:00.000-08:002014-02-19T04:42:47.810-08:00<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Wheatlands Farm</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Grassland Birds, 2013</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Swoope, VA</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Part III - Dickcissels</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">**(V I D E O)**</span></div>
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<a href="http://youtu.be/AyoccGw4hmE" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #2793e6; cursor: pointer; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 11px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://youtu.be/AyoccGw4hmE</a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For the third </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">year running Dickcissels returned in 2013 to Wheatlands Farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. The spring soundscape shifts radically the morning the Dickcissels awaken the grasslands, singing and counter-singing in a pattern that hints at katydids calling to a summer night. From the day they arrive these mini-meadowlarks belt out their raspy salutes to dominate the grassland rap. You would have to have your mobile device in your ear to miss them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">For perspective,
in the Shenandoah Valley during 2013 observers posted Dickcissel sightings on
eBird (</span><a href="http://ebird.org/ebird/map/"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">http://ebird.org/ebird/map/</span></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">)
at fewer locations than fingers on a woodworker’s right hand. In the
entire 2,500 square-mile Valley there were only three Dickcissel hot-spots,
meaning places where the birds were seen repeatedly. One of the hotspots was
Swoope, Virginia, near Buffalo Gap and all but one of the Swoope observations
occurred on Wheatlands Farm (the other was across the road). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">As we noted
in Part I of this post, I like to think the Swoope Dickcissels are legacy birds
from an era when you needed a herd of bison and two sticks to maintain
grasslands. If Swoope can be said to have a tourist trade, a fair fraction of
the photographers and fun seekers come to see the Dickcissels. You can find
Swoope by traditional means but a GPS helps.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">The Dickcissels
were here in 2000, then not again until the three-years beginning in 2011. I
discussed the excitement then with Kenn Kaufman
(</span><a href="http://www.kaufmanfieldguides.com/"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">www.<b>kaufmanfieldguides.com</b></span></a><b><span style="background: white; color: green; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">)</span></b><b><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></b><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif;">who</span><b><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">offered an explanation for the 2011
Dickcissel irruption to the east of the Alleghenies:</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif";">"..<i>.this is an interesting season for grassland
birds. I think it's driven at least partly by the extreme drought in the
southwest and the western plains ... only a part of the Dickcissel's normal
breeding range is under severe drought conditions, but it seems to be enough to
have caused a shift, and a number of areas farther east are reporting higher
numbers than usual. Certainly they're unusually numerous in Ohio. "<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">The western drought was even more
severe in 2012 when about two dozen Dickcissels sang at Wheatlands. In 2013 the
drought concentrated and shifted westward; a half-dozen males called on
Swoope. </span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Naturalist and author Barry
Kinzie (</span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Birds-Roanoke-Valley-annotated-checklist/dp/B000715PFW"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">www.<b>amazon.com</b>/<b>Birds</b>-Roanoke-Valley-annotated-checklist/dp/B000715PFW</span></a><span class="url"><span style="background: white; color: green; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">) </span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">visited Wheatlands during the 2012 Dickcissel takeover and voiced the
hope that a “ nursery colony” of the birds might develop and persist after the
droughts. That would be consistent with my speculation that Audubon’s "Black-throated
Bunting" is channeling a tribal
memory of the Swoope grasslands, perhaps a traditional Plan B to be dusted off
when the core western range is stressed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">The Dickcissels arrived on June 7<sup>th</sup>,
likely adrift from the parched West. The males sang and did little else; the
females strove and toiled, raising their broods, toting caterpillars first,
grasshoppers as the nestlings grew (</span><a href="http://www.birdsbybent.com/"><span style="background: white; color: #0070c0; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Bent’s Life histories</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">). The last Dickcissel song rang out on August 7<sup>th</sup>;
that male perched silent for a few more days then faded, perhaps in the
direction of Venezuela. When that happened early in August of 2012 I concluded
the entire Dickcissel company had left – wishful thinking on the part of a
farmer hoping to salvage a cutting of hay. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">This year the males may have
headed south in early August but the juveniles became the lawyers and lobbyists.
They began to issue a contact call that comes across as P(x)T, with an <i>sh</i>
in there somewhere, but no vowel. It was suggestive of, but different from,
their mothers’ protest chips and as the
adult females drifted into silence the juveniles became the voice of the
clan. Throughout August and into September
the calls of the juveniles betrayed their locations and made clear the
Dickcissels were a presence still. You can hear this call on the attached video
and you might find it useful in locating Dickcissels in late summer after the
males leave (or hide and hush). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Purloining vintage Kaufman humor
I’ll mention that the house at Wheatlands, built in 1813, celebrated its buffalo
birthday this year, something of a … "<i>bisontenniel"</i> . But the Europeans maintained the Buffalo Gap
grasslands after the bison left, all except for a grove of trees surrounding
the house, a sugar-maple island in a sea of grass. The yard trees are where the
Dickcissel juveniles spent their last days at Wheatlands. They quit the natal grass, the shrubs and
briars of their fledgeling days, and became, for a fortnight, forest birds,
P(x)Ting to a mother who had lost interest in their demands and perhaps had
struck her tent as well. They made their own foraging trips into the adjacent
pastures, plainly vocal regarding their new-found neglect. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: 115%;">Then, apparently surfing their own genetic GPSs, on
September 6<sup>th</sup> the recruits were gone. Se fueron.</span></div>
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Michael Godfreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04612217373851849969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4487249114209247370.post-26301003575256403402014-02-18T14:01:00.000-08:002014-02-19T04:31:47.029-08:00Part II, Bobolinks<div style="text-align: center;">
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Wheatlands Farm</div>
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Grassland Birds, 2013</div>
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Buffalo Gap, VA</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Part II - Bobolinks</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">**(VIDEO)**</span></div>
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for Apple devices</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #2793e6; cursor: pointer; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 11px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://youtu.be/-1z4IPjgJ64" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #2793e6; cursor: pointer; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 11px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://youtu.be/-1z4IPjgJ64</a></span></div>
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for Windows</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyjDURa2tCMKFJMoPKA_wQh_sVUduhLxrEimoxa9UZbxUzf1rjgtKzMsZbCIwtiYUYzjdMm8XqbHLq17A6riA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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At the beginning of the 2013 breeding season I was hopeful
that the flagship grassland birds – the Bobolinks and Dickcissels so elusive
here in the East – would again grace the grasslands at Wheatlands.
Because I am a cattle farmer, I was also optimistic that they would do their
business and depart with courteous dispatch so that Wheatlands and other farms in the
Shenandoah Valley could make the hay to feed their cattle through the coming
winter. </div>
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If I labor under myopic self-interest, I am comforted by the
understanding that presently in temperate North America cattle are the principal
reason for grasslands. On most farms subject to the economics of agriculture
the operative equation is: no cattle= no grasslands = no grassland birds.
Without today’s edition of the bison, the remaining grasslands in the East
would go back under the plow to grow commodity beans and corn – or commodity
pulpwood, or commodity subdivisions. I believe that the prospects for our grassland birds are linked closely to cattle farming.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My concern is with finding means which do not burden the
cattle farmer of accommodating the breeding needs of these marathon migrants.
Logic suggests that if we are to enjoy the delight and the biodiversity
afforded by the grassland migrants we need to seek ways to integrate them into
the grazing and haying regimes of the families still grinding out a living on
the cattle farms of the East and thereby still furnishing the nesting habitat
for Bobolinks and Dickcissels. I was
hopeful of finding that the breeding schedule would not preclude cutting a
prime stand of alfalfa and orchard grass for hay before it goes to seed and
before the briars and thistles take the stand. As we will see, that was optimistic.<o:p></o:p></div>
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You don’t just make hay any old time the notion overtakes
you. Hay has to be cut after the spring weather permits curing and before the
grasses and legumes divert their energy from growth to reproduction – to flowering
and making seed. That window is commonly as narrow as two weeks; some years it
never opens. In the Mid-Atlantic States the first cutting occurs mid-June at
the latest. There is hay to be cut to feed the cows in winter and there is also
the need to graze the cow herd through the growing season, April through
October. Ideally we could juggle pastures and hay ground to provide grazing all
year, but that gets tricky with the grass under two feet of snow. Therefore the
need for some hay is unavoidable where winter is a reality, as it can be in the
Shenandoah Valley with generous snowfall and occasional sub-zero temperatures. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It is not difficult to infer the success rate of nesting
attempts in a stand of grass cut for hay – zilch. If the herdsman forgoes a cutting of hay in
behalf of the grassland birds, he or she must buy replacement hay.
First-cutting hay carries a market value of about $500 per acre. <a href="http://www.uvm.edu/rsenr/envnr_people/faculty-cv/strong.html">Allan
Strong</a>, researching grassland bird nesting on farms in Vermont’s Champlain Valley,
used the USDA’s <a href="http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/programs/.../eqip">EQIP
Program</a> to compensate farmers for deferring their hay cutting until after
the nesting season (see Les Line’s account in <a href="http://www.audubonmagazine.org/articles/birds/buying-time">Audubon
Magazine</a> ). Some plan for
compensating farmers for lost hay, perhaps patterned on Dr. Strong’s approach,
will have to be developed if grassland bird nesting is to be restored in the East
on a meaningful scale. We will also have to consider what Strong calls the
Bobolink’s “area sensitivity”, or requirement for large contiguous tracts of
grassland – up to 60 acres for a nesting group <span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">(Allan M. Strong, Grassland and Successional Bird Conference, </span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Benzene/Desktop/nationalzoo.si.edu/scbi/">Smithsonian
Conservation Biology Institute</a><span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"> , September 15, 2012)</span>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A news account of the UVM program notes some of the issues
in the life of a Bobolink:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif";">“They have flown across the Caribbean and the Amazon,” said
conservation biologist Roz Renfrew of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies. “They
have endured unbearable heat, been treated as pests in farm fields in South
America. They escaped trapping for the pet trade in the Caribbean and may have
survived hurricanes.”</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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But getting to North America in May to nest does not assure
safe harbor for the Bobolink because of conflict with farming schedules:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif";">"A bobolink that nests in a field that is cut twice or three
times a summer faces zero chance of raising any young. Small wonder that<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">surveys for</span><span style="color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif";"> the Vermont Breeding Bird Atlas found that bobolink numbers had
plummeted 75 percent from 1966-2007." </span><span style="color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Candace
Page, </span><a href="http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20130414/.../304140007"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Burlington
Free Press</span></a><span style="color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "Helvetica","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt; line-height: 115%;">, 4/13/13<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The fortunes of the Bobolink, and other grassland endemics,
in Vermont may not differ materially from those in Virginia or in the lands
between. Researchers in Vermont have taken an interest in grassland bird
restoration so we rely on their findings. The Green Mountain folk and their
neighbors in Rhode Island have also fielded an inspirational community-based
restoration effort financed by local contributions called <a href="http://www.bobolinkproject.com/"><span class="Heading1Char"><span style="color: #00b0f0; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The Bobolink Project</span></span></a><span style="color: #00b0f0;"> </span>. The undertaking funds the delay of hay cutting
to give the Bobolinks and other grassland breeders a chance to nest. The
project appeals to the obligation the citizens feel to support their wildlife
and their local farms, both of which contribute to the quality of their lives. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">In 2013 the Bobolinks
arrived at Wheatlands Farm on April 30<sup>th</sup> and without delay the males
began their signature posturing and gurgling and sparkles of flight song. Because the males zip across hundreds of
yards from chummy bachelor groups to charm individual females on their (the
females’) territories, and because Bobolinks are polygamous and polyandrous, it
was difficult to get a count. How many?
A half dozen or more of both genders.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The hoopla continued
unabated until, on June 20<sup>th</sup>, it quit. It was as if the entire
rollicking company had decamped overnight, not a Bobolink to be seen or heard. Everybody else was in place; the Dickcissels
(we’ll get to them), the Grasshopper Sparrows, the Meadowlarks, the Savannah
Sparrows. I saw no conclusion other than that the Bobolinks had abandoned their
nesting efforts and so reported to the </span><a href="http://www.vaworkinglandscapes.org/">Virginia
Working Landscapes</a><span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">
coordinator whose associates were conducting a breeding bird census at
Wheatlands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">I would learn later that in
2012 the coordinator, Amy Johnson, a doctoral candidate in grassland
ornithology, had experienced a similar Bobolink outage on another Shenandoah
Valley farm 75 miles to the north of Wheatlands. In both instances the birds vanished
(or so it seemed) in the third week of June and reappeared a month later. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">I first
(re)noticed them on July 23d<sup>th</sup>, rolling waves of adults of both
sexes (some males in molt) and skinny juveniles with stubby tails. The females
were carrying food. The young were able to fly but they gaped and panted and
were plainly still on light duty. Over the next month males completed molt, the
juveniles gained flesh and stamina, the mamas did the heavy lifting and by
early September they all looked alike. </span><span style="color: #2c2c2c;">Occasionally
I could get a count as flocks came and went and on August 11th saw 84 Bobolinks
pitching into 16 acres of my weedy, uncut hay</span><i style="color: #2c2c2c;"> </i><span style="color: #2c2c2c;">(uncompensated, by the way). I am confident that number is
conservative.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">So, Kim Kaufman,
Executive Director of Black Swamp Bird Observatory at Oak Harbor, Ohio (</span><a href="http://www.bsbobird.org/"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">www.bsbo<b>bird</b>.org/</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #00802a; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";"> ) </span><span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">did the Bobolinks leave in mid-June, complete their breeding elsewhere,
then return in July? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">“I doubt it. Those juveniles with the stubby tails would not
have been capable of travel. The birds probably bred where you saw them.“<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Combining Kim’s
assessment with Amy’s observation from 2012 suggests that after the eggs hatch,
perhaps even at the time they are laid, the Bobolinks go under the radar, stop
displaying and move in stealthy feeding forays. When the fledglings are mobile
a month later the entire tribe resurfaces in force. In 2013 at Wheatlands they spent another four
weeks foraging intensively on the natal grounds, socializing, recruiting,
and training for the trek to Uruguay -- at 12,000 round-trip miles, one of the
longest known migrations of any land bird breeding in North America. Flocks of
up to 50 birds shuttled between weedy stands of uncut hay, flashing mustard in
the late sun, chiming their flight call. Sixty birds pitched into the main
breeding paddock on September 5<sup>th</sup>; and again on the 10<sup>th. </sup> Thereafter they were overhead only in 2s and
3s, perhaps birds in passage. A single Bobolink flushed from cover on September 15<sup>th</sup>. Entonces se fueron hacia las pampas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">(My) Bobolink conclusions
from Wheatlands observations, 2013:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">-<span style="font-size: 7pt;"> - </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The
raucous displays of flight song cease at about the time of hatching, June 20<sup>th</sup>
+/-.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">-<span style="font-size: 7pt;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">- The birds haven’t left; they are just lying low, foraging in cover. The males have
quit singing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">-<span style="font-size: 7pt;"> - </span></span><span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">An
attractive breeding field might invite Bobolinks from nearby breeding areas to
aggregate there after fledging for the resources needed to mature the juveniles
and prepare the cohort for migration.
This neighborly interaction might explain how the dozen or so adults on this
farm at the beginning of breeding grew to scores by early September.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">-<span style="font-size: 7pt;"> - </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Experience
here in 2013 suggests a breeding stand can be grazed moderately (but probably not
mobbed) after the Bobolinks fledge without detriment to the birds. In fact, the
cattle shared the stand with the
84-member Bobolink flock. The key to integrating grassland bird conservation with cattle farming practice will be to find a way for cattle and birds to co-utilize the stands after fledging. Light, rotational grazing (not continuous grazing) appeared to offer promise on this farm in 2103. Rotational grazing is labor-intensive; it does not happen by accident. We must consider also that <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">-<span style="font-size: 7pt;"> - </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">The
Bobolinks need six weeks on the nesting ground <i>after</i> fledging to raise the young and build strength for the
journey to southern South America. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">If the last observation withstands
more field scrutiny, we might reconsider the adequacy of a schedule which gives
the Bobolinks use of the natal grounds only through fledging. If the stand is
cut just after fledging the breeding group may lack the resources to mature the
juveniles. My observations at Wheatlands in 2013 suggest the post-fledging
grow-out period is no less essential to the Bobolinks’ breeding success than is
the nesting opportunity. Their chances are likely better if they are not forced
from the breeding field by a July mowing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">We cannot forget the
cattle and the farmer in this equation.
Rather than viewing them both as irritants, as some conservationists
occasionally let slip, we might consider that we will have but few grassland
birds in the East without the <i>private</i>
grasslands, typically in active use as pasture or hay ground for cattle. The
cattle take vigilante action at woody intrusion in their pastures, and the
farmer mows hay and clips pasture for weed control and both actions suppress
woody succession. Some public grasslands,
such as those planted on reclaimed landfills, provide active grassland bird
conservation opportunities ; others, especially lands in hunting programs, commonly
grow up in autumn olive for lack of funds to arrest the succession process, an energy-
and labor-intensive endeavor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #2c2c2c; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">In the private realm,
maintaining the grasslands is part of the accepted economics of cattle farming. Forgoing cuttings of hay is not. If the
public good suggests that grassland ecosystems with their appealing birds are
important, then we should discuss public policy which recognizes the need to
integrate their conservation with the realities of farming. Allan Strong and
Amy Johnson are among those who are leading research which could support public
discussion of conserving our grassland birds. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Michael Godfreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04612217373851849969noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4487249114209247370.post-5958375318071253012013-11-21T04:28:00.001-08:002013-12-02T13:27:32.447-08:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Wheatlands Grassland
Birds – 2013 <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Part One<o:p></o:p></div>
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In their 2013 breeding enterprise the grassland birds at
Wheatlands Farm confounded and amazed. But as Flip Wilson used to say,<o:p></o:p></div>
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“ I’m going to tell you that story ,
but first I need to tell you this one so I can tell you that one.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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A discussion of
grassland birds needs a sketch of grassland history and dynamics, which we
cover in this first part; we’ll get to the 2013 adventures of the grassland
birds in the next two episodes. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Wheatlands, a 165-acre beef cattle farm
in the southern Shenandoah Valley, lies in the rain shadow of North Mountain, specifically
to the immediate east of 4463’ Elliott Knob which lofts nearly 3000’ above the
Valley floor. In the lee of that
prominence the annual rainfall averages 35 inches, ten inches less than the 45 inches
lavished on the rest of Virginia. Thirty-five inches is a moisture regime
favoring grasslands over deciduous forest and is only slightly more than the average
for the tall-grass prairies that once carpeted Illinois and Missouri and Iowa –
with a little help from the grazing ungulates and the peoples who invested in
the “millennia of exuberant burning” chronicled by Charles C. Mann in <u><i>1491</i>.(</u><span style="background: white; color: blue; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;">www.<b>theatlantic.com</b>/magazine/archive/2002/03/<b>1491</b>/302445)</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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It would be more accurate to say that at a location in
temperate North America experiencing a 35-inch rainfall, woody plant
succession is more easily arrested than at 45 inches. However, even at reduced
moisture, plant succession is still as certain as gravity unless some force
acts to suppress the trees and shrubs.
Humans, sponsoring a rich and mobile protein source in the form of
grazing ungulates, have been that force since the Wisconsin ice receded 11,000
years ago. Perhaps for all of post-glacial history humans have managed the
North American landscape to create grasslands where practicable, including much
of the region east of the Allegheny Mountains and especially , I am inclined to
believe, in the rain shadow of North Mountain.
That 20-square-mile enclave is beef cattle country today as it was bison
country a thousand years ago. Buffalo Creek has cut a waterway through Little North
Mountain creating Buffalo Gap which offered the bison summer grazing in the
interior of the Alleghenies. Wheatlands Farm is at the center of North
Mountain’s 35-inch rainfall arc. <o:p></o:p></div>
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*( V I D E O)*</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Wheatlands Herd Management</span></div>
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I live at Wheatlands, so I muse upon the Buffalo Gap
grasslands, their history and their legacy complement of grassland birds. I and
a Border Collie named Benson tend a cow/calf herd of Charolais-Angus beef
cattle 75 to 100 critters strong. The
Wheatlands cattle, like the bison, are grazers; they eat a mix of grass
and forbs (non-grass herbs). When they
discover a woody sapling in a pasture they attack, chomping and stomping,
horning and wallowing, ripping off branches and pawing the successional
intruder into oblivion. I suspect the bison carried the same
genetically-encoded chip on their wooly humps, the innate urge to destroy
trees, perhaps sensing that trees are a threat to their grassland "salad bar" (a <a href="https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&safe=active&site=&source=hp&q=joel+salatin+books&oq=Joel+Salatin&gs_l=hp.1.4.0l10.6147.10218."><span style="color: blue;">Joel Salatin</span></a> term. Joel also lives and raises cattle in the North Mountain rain shadow). The cattle may be desperate for shade but they
will not suffer a sapling to grow in their pasture. Moreover, they eventually
kill even the mature trees by clustering under them, rubbing off the bark, and
compacting soil at the roots.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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My interpretation is subjective, but the bovid inclination
to work in concert with fire-wielding humans to create and maintain grasslands
is clear enough. I am comfortable with
the conclusion that grasslands in temperate North America and other locations, modern and past, are
typically the result of the ancient alliance of humans and bovid ungulates –
cattle (genetically,<a href="http://www.itsnature.org/rip/aurochs"> <span style="color: blue;">auroches</span></a>
) and <a href="file:///C:/Users/Benzene/Documents/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bison">bison</a>. Remove the
bovids from the equation and humans have no incentive to burn (or mow). Remove
the humans and the bison (or cattle) eventually face reduced rations or at
least a shift of diet to browsing, which requires a different gut chemistry
than is typical of bovids. Remove both and the land reforests in half a human
span (<a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/9780807846711"><span style="color: blue;">Godfrey, 1980</span></a>).
<o:p></o:p></div>
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From the standpoint of grassland birds, grazers are a
blessing, if mixed. As they can stomp woody saplings they can also stomp on-ground nests. But as they munch along they tend to leave a grass/forb stand of varying
heights which accommodates the birds’ foraging and nesting needs. Dr. <a href="file:///C:/Users/Benzene/Documents/cadizanimalclinic.com/team/scott-pendleton-dvm">Scott Pendleton</a>, a
veterinarian in Cadiz, Ohio, monitors Upland Sandpipers and Bobolinks on
reclaimed mine land in Harrison County. He notes, <o:p></o:p></div>
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“All the successful Upland
Sandpiper and Bobolink nests I have seen on these reclaimed mine lands are in
sections which the mine owners lease to local farmers for grazing. The birds
need stands of varying heights and densities which the cattle create. The
challenge is to encourage farmers to delay mowing to let the birds complete
nesting.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Call the grasslands a stool, if you will, of the kind that
furnishes seating and requires three legs – people, ungulates, and a group of
birds which are obligate grassland breeders. If the grasslands and the grassland ungulates
knew a close ecological kinship with the humans of olden times so must the grassland
birds. Over the millennia the Meadowlarks, the Grasshopper Sparrows, the
Bobolinks, the Dickcissels must have been co-passengers with the bison on
mankind’s grassland rollercoaster.
Management by birds of seed dispersal, insect pollinators, and food-source insects
(grasshoppers <i>et al</i>) are surely vital
functions in grassland economics, perhaps of importance equal to the
contributions of people and bovids. The entire avian cohort must have learned
to balance in the shifting winds of human-created grasslands in North America, riding
waves of tribal warfare, weather events, climate shifts, and developments in
food-production technology. We must have
in mind that pre-Columbian native populations in North America were large -- 20
to 40 million people at times (<span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/1649/1491"><span style="color: blue;">Mann, <i>1491</i></span></a>)</span>-- and the ability, the need,
of those populations to manipulate the landscape carried massive ecological
impact. Trackless virgin forests? Forget it. Even in the East. It is much more
efficient to harvest bison in large herds on open grasslands than individual deer skulking in forests. <o:p></o:p></div>
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A hypothesis emerges; like the bison and the grasslands
themselves, the grassland birds must operate in a confederacy with mankind. Over time
(people have been in North America for at least 16,000 years) the grassland
birds have followed moccasin and hoof through wealth and want, shifting their
ranges and schedules and diets with the fortunes of the grasslands of human
creation. We see our birds, our surrounds generally, through a squinty lens of
500 post-Columbian years. That is a very
short slice (maybe 5% of the whole salami) of the era of people and their
grasslands in North America. The dynamics have always shifted and calamity is
likely no stranger, but it seems justifiable to see at least a blur of birds
and bison on mankind’s grasslands over 500 or so human generations. <o:p></o:p></div>
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A Krakatoan blast hit North America’s grasslands after 1492 in
the form of diseases distributed by the Spanish. Very quickly, most of the
native human population was dead. There was no immunity to the new pathogens and
there was little immunodiversity in the native genetic endowment because the natives of the Western
Hemisphere were descendants of a small number of adventurers who crossed
the Bering Land Bridge. In <i>Guns, Germs, and Steel</i> Jared Diamond reports,<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced by Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance of the Europans themselves, killing an estimated 95% of the pre-Columbian native American population. The most populous and highly organized native societies in North America, the Mississipian chiefdoms, disaappeared in that way between 1492 and the late 1600s, even before Europeans themselves made their first settlement on the Mississippi River. "</blockquote>
<br />
The scheme
which had created and maintained the grasslands must have collapsed abruptly. Much
of the continent, especially the well-watered East, quickly reforested. Some understand the volume of atmospheric
carbon sequestered in this sudden reforestation to be sufficient to account for
the 200-year global temperature drop beginning in 1650 known as the <span style="color: blue;"><a href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/columbus-arrival-linked-carbon-dioxide-drop"><span style="color: blue;">Little
Ice Age</span></a>.</span> By the time the English took an interest in penetrating the
continent’s interior in the early 1700s a newly established canopy covered dark
corridors of forest that shrugged as if to ask “Grasslands? What
Grasslands?”<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the 1700s the English, and others, cleared a lot of
forest and created a lot of new grasslands. By 1900, 75% of the Piedmont was under plow or pasture. In the accounts of<a href="http://www.birdsbybent.com/"> <span style="color: blue;">A.C. Bent</span></a><u>,</u>
the grassland birds recovered somewhat. But
by 1980 only 25% of the Piedmont was cultivated – we, especially we
southerners, abandoned our farms wholesale and put them in the hands of the
wood products companies creating a desert of row-planted pines. The grassland breeders vanished from those lands. Bent refers to a reduction in the
Dickcissel’s presence in the East beginning in 1900; the 1980 edition of <a href="http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/peterson">Peterson’s</a> <u>Field
Guide to the Birds</u> notes “formerly bred along seaboard Mass to S.C.” The Dickcissel, an obligate grassland
breeder, has responded to the abandonment (and reforestation) of eastern
farmland by vacating much of the East. Other grassland endemics, including
Bobolinks, are reduced as well.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another disruption now threatens the grassland birds –
climate change. Beginning in 2011 and
through the 2013 nesting cycle, there has been chronic drought and fire in the
Dickcissel’s core breeding range, the traditional prairie grasslands. The
results are apparent in one corner of one valley in Virginia and probably at other
locations to the east of the Alleghenies. An informed argument (<a href="http://www.kaufmanfieldguides.com/KennKaufman.htm"><span style="color: blue;">Kaufman</span></a>, private
correspondence, 2011) suggests that drought-associated pressure on the core
breeding range in the Great Plains forced some of the birds eastward. For the
first time since 2000, Wheatlands hosted Dickcissels in 2011, probably a half
dozen, then more than two dozen singing males in 2012. Numbers were down in
2013 to the 2011 level as the drought shifted westward. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We can hope that the Dickcissels that fled the western
droughts in 2011-2013 to nest in the southern Shenandoah Valley may rekindle an
interest that will persist even when drought spares the West. That depends on
the health of the eastern grasslands and on the compatibility of our farming methods
with the birds' breeding needs – in other words, the Dickcissels not only need to nest
in the East, they need to nest <i>successfully</i>
to recruit a cadre committed to the East.
Because nearly all remaining eastern grasslands are on active farms under intensive
production, many nests go through hay-making machinery.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
In the next two parts of this post we will detail the 2013
nesting cycle of the Bobolinks and Dickcissels at Wheatlands. Their unexpected schedules
and behaviors may add an increment to our understanding of these birds with an
ancient link to man.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
Michael Godfreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04612217373851849969noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4487249114209247370.post-90881359262338209742013-07-07T19:10:00.002-07:002013-11-21T04:26:58.468-08:00A New Lease on Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">*(VIDEO)*</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwn9WUTlw1YUtpHPNJ1X1KcIzgnk5RnDcWc9AnHhCtnLovkxJQR4oLVLALQG63seGiZ6l_MwagskNY4XWtdzA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Upland Sandpipers, Harrison County, Ohio</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Natural Grade”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s what the natives
of Harrison County, Ohio, call the shape of the land left after epochs of
erosion of the once mighty Appalachians.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>That
shape is unusual now in parts of Harrison County because the coal interests
have deep mined, and high-walled, and strip mined 80% of some townships.
The recontoured lands – those mined after the law required smoothing and
seeding -- show a bloated uniformity contrasting with the angular “natural
grade” remnants, some forested. The recontoured lands grow grass tufted with
the alien invasive, autumn olive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The dozerscape does
not affront the grassland birds of Harrison County. These synthetic hills offer
safe breeding harbor to Grasshopper Sparrows; Savannah Sparrows; Henslow's<i> </i>Sparrows; Vesper
Sparrows; Horned Larks; Eastern Meadowlarks with dialects suggesting
Dickcissel’s introductory notes; Bobolinks; and, wailing out of the mists of
myth,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Upland Sandpipers</i>!
What this polyglot singing on the dozered slopes says is that whatever mix of
plants the coal company planted for erosion control evidently is acceptable to
the native grasshoppers and other insects, for these invertebrates feed a
multitude. It is difficult to imagine a more vibrant community of grassland
birds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After the first round
of strip mining, the company began liquidating the mined-out land in
tracts ranging from 5 to 200 acres. Then two things happened; a
new technology enabled the re-stripping of parts of the land for coal
that once had been deemed inaccessible or inferior<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and the Marcellus Age dawned. The coal
company lost all interest in selling and made plans to further work the
holdings, happily stripping and fracking into the 21<sup>st</sup> century. The
upside, if there can be an upside to a land torn by extraction, is land
stripped before the reclamation law and scarred by 80 foot highwalls will be
reclaimed to something approximating natural grade and large tracts of open
grassland will be formed or preserved. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But what to do with
the tracts of grassland while they are warehoused for future exploitation?
Leasing them to cattle farmers seemed logical; that generates a little revenue and it puts
someone on the land with a security interest. <span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Grazing the reworked lands with
cattle in large boundaries also happens to mimic the imprint of bison on the
land – enriching soils, diversifying the grass and forb stands and, most
importantly for the grassland birds, creating grass stands of varying heights
and densities. In the words of Dr. Scott Pendleton, an accomplished field
naturalist and a veterinarian at Cadiz Animal Clinic, a large-and small-animal
practice near the Cadiz, Ohio, airport:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“More than half our Henslow’s nests and <i>all</i> of
the Upland Sandpiper nests are on coal company land that has been grazed. Also,
the sandpipers and their hatchlings like to forage on the newly-cut
hay ground. We are working with the leasing farmers to schedule
cutting and grazing after June 20<sup>th</sup> when the
young Uppies are out foraging with the adults and most of the passerine birds
have fledged.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The take-home points
from this expedition to Harrison County, Ohio, are that: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The only place in the
county to host breeding Upland Sandpipers, an Ohio Endangered Species, is recontoured
strip-mined land, and<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On that recontoured
land the Upland Sandpipers show a clear preference for grass stands that have
been grazed by cattle, a preference they share with many other grassland birds.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 5.0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Does Harrison County
offer a template for an exciting conservation initiative? </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Michael Godfreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04612217373851849969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4487249114209247370.post-74745693210436504032013-05-21T22:18:00.000-07:002013-05-21T22:18:07.681-07:00The Arctic Nearby<div style="text-align: center;">
*(VIDEO)*</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There is a conversion meteorologists use called the Adiabatic Lapse Rate. What it says is that for every thousand feet of gain in altitude the temperature drops three degrees Fahrenheit. Biologists employ a corollary equating a thousand foot gain in altitude with 600 miles of latitude, meaning that going up a mountainside a thousand feet is the climatic equivalent of traveling 600 miles north. So if you are in Ohio or Virginia at an altitude of 700 feet above sea level and you drive to Cranberry Mountain in West Virginia -- at 3575 feet -- you barter a hundred-mile drive for a trip to the boreal forests of Canada, 1600 miles to the north. That's the theory and in practice it is probably not far off. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
One way to confirm the altitude-latitude conversion is to look at the range maps of some of the birds which journey from the tropics to breed in the boreal conifers. Many observe a breeding range across Canada from the approximate latitude of Hudson's Bay to the U.S. -Canada border, a clean and regular band -- except for a dangling appendix down the spine of the Appalachian Mountains. If we pick a couple of boreal breeders such as Northern Waterthrush and Mourning Warbler we see that their breeding ranges reflect this Appalachian peninsula. As a result, we in the eastern or mid-western U.S. can drive a relatively short distance into the Appalachian highlands and enjoy a fair chance of finding these two northerly warblers on their breeding grounds. Cranberry Glades 15 miles west of Marlinton, West Virginia is the place to do it.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Cranberry Glades are a relic of the Wisconsin glaciation; they constitute a botanic community of reindeer moss and red spruce which developed when the wall of Wisconsin ice bulldozed northern Ohio and Pennsylvania, pushing an arctic climate into our now-balmy realm. The ice retreated but the altitude and boggy soils permit Cranberry Glades' boreal botany to persist in glorious isolation, ours to savor on a day's jaunt.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Of course, sorting through the birds' calls when we get there is another challenge. The attached video offers a comparison of the songs of Northern Waterthrush and Mourning Warbler filmed at the Glades this morning and to complete the confusion we add a shot of the Louisiana Waterthrush, a much more accessible bird breeding along wooded streams at the lower elevations most of us occupy. All three (they are all warblers) sing in a burst of whistles followed by a dropping inflection, and because we rarely get to see and hear the northern worthies, we might find it useful to make the comparison with our more familiar lowland waterthrush.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Caveat: this video won't help a bit when you get to Cranberry Glades. If your experience is like mine the overlapping chorus of echos and harmonies will leave you befuddled. But go anyway to enjoy this tiny nugget of the north in our midst.</div>
Michael Godfreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04612217373851849969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4487249114209247370.post-56380932426692391522013-05-02T19:53:00.000-07:002013-05-16T17:44:32.650-07:00<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-size: large;">(* Video *<span style="font-size: large;">)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">River Beings</span></div>
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May 2, 2013, Middle
River, Swoope, Virginia.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The Middle River
runs through this cattle farm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are about
twelve water miles downstream of the highest gathers, a series of springs on a
farm at the hamlet of McKinley,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and the
trickles and tributaries give the flow a thirty-foot channel through
Wheatlands, as this farm has been called since 1813. Downstream, the River
merges with the North and that combined flow takes on the South at Port Republic to laze and loop northward under the name of South Fork, Shenandoah
River, merging with the North Fork at Front Royal to make the main stem of the
Shenandoah for its 65-mile run to the grand conjoining with the Potomac at
Harpers Ferry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of the nation’s
history, tranquil or tragic, is written in that storied drainage washing the
feet of official Washington. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here in the
high headwaters, too, we see our share of the sinister.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzZBURyeJLGJihtqelylzXY7mAjnsF9QTbTIyV7Ea2ZU9F7h3e22fG6tCyEinM053Jh2eC_bwDCMARwNHzB3g' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">What began this morning as a hike to greet the River’s
spring arrivals -- a Solitary Sandpiper, a Spotted Sandpiper skimming the flow
on stiff wings, a Great Egret, two Black-crowned Night-Herons – took a cloak-and-dagger
turn. A muskrat crossed the river to
vanish under the bank at my feet, peculiarly close to an obvious intruder it
seemed. Then came strange scuffling
sounds and a red streak shot away across the river, the early sun a neon pulse
in its fur. It humped up the bank and
the bushes shook with squalls of protest. A desperate contest thrashed the grasses until
a muskrat tumbled down the river’s bank and swam upstream, dragging (or driven
by?) a snaking tail. A noisy melee continued in the brush for some seconds. Then
quiet resumed, leaving only a string of unanswered questions, like a Congress
adjourned. Did the escaping muskrat
fight off the mink? Or did it leave behind a sacrificed family member? What
happened in the hole in the bank under my feet? And are minks really foxy red or was that just
a tricky light? The river beings guard silence.</span></span></span>Michael Godfreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04612217373851849969noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4487249114209247370.post-55030697958618663312013-03-29T12:53:00.000-07:002013-03-29T18:54:58.694-07:00A Profile in Courage<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--> * ( VIDEO ) *<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyXG9HztLO_F9EkT_lBkAGB5wTNT55yolbTbGStpZRsCmf3uI4NcA1j1EQPHdeH8j7lrtGdPi0aUWaTxSqWEA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h2>
A
Profile in Courage</h2>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;">T</span>he late sun finds a crack in the
clouds to aim into a westbound windshield where the road cranks hard right at a
hilltop. Last night at that curve an opossum (hereinafter <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">possum</i>) wandered into the road and today's glare gives a glimpse of a
large bird astride the remains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An
instinctive jerk of the wheel puts my car into the oncoming lane, at that
moment vacant as I am able to report.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
pull off the road, needing a look at this strange, defiant chicken refusing to
yield to traffic. </div>
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I can tell you what I see, but I
cannot describe the sadness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The bird
has a ragged wing, a crippled foot, and a tail the color of a faded fire truck. It
struggles to hold down its meal with one functioning foot, to balance with one
working wing as it tears at morsels of marsupial. A car climbs the hill. The
driver reads the road and eases over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Another, just behind, yanks her wheel at the last instant. The wrecked
and famished hawk bends to the possum as if it has no choice, trusting somehow
in a universal kindness, standing tall as cars pass but yielding not an inch. </div>
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Car after truck passes the poignant
scene. Drivers, bewildered and uncertain at the mayhem in
the road, shake it off with quizzical shrugs, perhaps a frown of sympathy. But the outcome seems inevitable
and I can not bear to be a witness. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">I can't but recall that</span>
the last injured Red-tailed Hawk I tried to help treated me to a trip to the ER,
blood spurting through a welding glove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have no glove today and hawk and possum
could hardly have chosen a more parlous platform for their drama. There is no point in adding a human carcass.</div>
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So I leave, but the scene travels
with me. No, the bird has no choice; a steep bank blocks its way off the road and
it cannot fly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, I was right not to intervene because the
bird’s chances, sparse on a hilltop curve, may be no better under the triage
protocol of a resource-strapped raptor center. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And might it fly again, ever, or soar only in
Valhalla? </div>
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<br /></div>
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Or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">can</i> it fly? Desperation drove the lamed and gaunt raptor to
the road kill, but the bird didn’t hitch hike to get there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i>
a universal kindness that responds with an involuntary <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>wheel jerk
to the courage and determination of another hunter badly behind in the race for
life. In my hopes the bird drags its full crop and battered being to the low
side of the road and launches, listing and lurching, for a perch to rest and
digest. </div>
Michael Godfreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04612217373851849969noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4487249114209247370.post-72673157668688774582013-03-03T20:49:00.000-08:002013-05-16T17:29:55.097-07:00 Grasslands at the End of WInter<div style="text-align: center;">
* (MOVIE) *</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxl0TfFFGsbJDKX9gyqJb-5ykE4A8c6yLzztjr0pukFmOW2xQraVAXnWvNtundIjEf-4-CuRXh3-KyrG8VTew' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />
Undertaker-in-Chief</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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In the Grasslands of the southern Shenandoah Valley the end
of winter brings a new crop of calves and a stand of grass weary of its winter
burden, gnawed short and peppered with frozen Frisbees. The grasses will start
to grow in a fortnight but for now the cows rely on hay unrolled in
the pastures and the rodents skitter in scant cover. The calves begin to hit the
ground and the raptors rake the rodents. It is a rhythm harkening to millennia
of shaggier ungulates farmed with fire and eating native stands free of fescue,
but otherwise not so different from the tempo of our time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of all
the players, the raptors and rodents may have marked the changes least.</div>
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One constant is the first-calf heifers, bison then and cattle now,
struggling with calves sometimes more developed than they can birth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without the herdsman’s
vigilance the late-adolescent labor can claim both mother and young. A calf
is head-locked and stillborn and the work of saving the heifer reveals that
the calf would have passed the head constriction only to be hip-locked as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a life that does not happen.</div>
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Or perhaps it does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Life
throbs in the pastures of this mini-Serengheti<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and little goes wasted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turkey Vultures
cluster, solemn bishops bound by their protocol;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a pair of Common Ravens drives them off. A
Bald Eagle bumps the Ravens, upending the carcass for the fresh underside, a
Schwarzeneggerian dead lift of fifty pounds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The over-boosted audio in the eagle video’s second scene includes the faint
bark of a red fox.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is it protesting the
eagle? The great bird launches with a full crop and in its talons a goodly share for an incubating mate.</div>
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By day Red-Tailed Hawks pick off the exposed rodents, Harriers sweep the
swales. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At dusk a roost of Short-eared
Owls ghosts into the gloaming to mouse through the cows and the scampering calves
that won the birthing lottery. </div>
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Late Winter -- Not the Best Time To Be a Pasture Rodent</div>
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Michael Godfreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04612217373851849969noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4487249114209247370.post-55595144928157845842013-01-21T07:27:00.000-08:002013-12-02T13:35:09.018-08:00<div style="text-align: center;">
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A Collusion of Harriers</div>
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The winter of 2012-2013 brings an unusual number of Northern Harriers to Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. We see them in strong numbers and in expeditions; not just individuals quartering separately but pairs and trios sectioning the fields at staggered altitudes and in close proximity. A juvenile Harrier crosses a pasture flying low, straight, as if to a destination. A second bird, an adult male, follows 100 feet behind and 100' above. They recede from view in that echelon formation. On a friend's farm two Harriers circle low over her stand of native warm-season grasses, again an adult and a hatch-year bird. They tangle and the adult drives the young bird into the tree line, but two more approach from different directions to hunt the 30-acre grass stand, and the gray bird gives up his swaggering. A minute later they all leave. Out my kitchen window a juvenile sits on a fence post scanning the winter-brown berry patch. Egad, three posts away sits another! Then a third juvenile makes a run up the row of raspberry canes and both the perched birds turn to watch.<br />
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The close proximity of these hounds of the grasslands is not likely the result of chance; there are hundreds -- OK, thousands -- of acres of pasture in the Shenandoah Valley near Buffalo Gap<br />
and if the Harriers so desired each could have a private hunting reserve. Instead they sometimes cluster, to the extent that if you see one they have trained you to look for another nearby. <br />
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So what's going on here? You don't suppose this is... cooperative hunting? The two perched juveniles watching a third make a pass nearby behave similarly to a squad of Harris' Hawks I saw in Cochise County, Arizona; some perching to watch as others maneuvered. Harris' Hawks are accomplished cooperators, purposefully chasing and flushing while teammates wait to strike. But perhaps there is also a less coordinated, if still intentional, mode of gang hunting. Short-eared Owls do it, wheel and scan for grassland rodents in grumpy proximity, tangling when their circles overlap. But chummy or not, they bark at one another and cluster-hunt and you have to suspect there is a net benefit. They could as easily hunt singly. Perhaps it's not essential that everybody agree on an attack plan to bring off an ambush -- something less elaborate than the old "You wait here while I circle around and flush him your way" trick might work occasionally. It may be sufficient that the adult Harrier who was dogging the young bird in echelon will nab a rodent fleeing the lead bird but unaware of the second. It may be that adjacent-hunting raptors would just as soon make a meal of one another as snatch a vole, but the vole is an easier snack and likely more rattled by two Harriers than by one. It may be that experienced adults clepto-hunt by keeping an eye on juveniles. Other raptors and scavengers, too -- a Common Raven for example -- might be caught on camera confiscating a young Harrier's catch.<br />
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Or the explanation may be as simple as young Harriers in casual collusion as a means of making it through their first winter.<br />
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Update: Researcher Amy Johnson sends her photos of a pair and a trio of Harriers hunting together.<br />
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<br />Michael Godfreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04612217373851849969noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4487249114209247370.post-77983214081122093172012-10-25T07:07:00.000-07:002012-10-25T07:24:43.901-07:00<br />
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Buffalo Gap Dickcissels, 2012</div>
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Distinctive Calls of Male Dickcissels</div>
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If you have Dickcissels in your pastures or if you pass their field with your window down there will be little doubt of it, for the males take their bright colors and loud voices to their advertisement perches and sing and counter-sing, hardly taking a breath break. They arrive as a group and seize the grassland acoustics. Breeding males are loud and obvious and they generate a territorial din. This year the Dickcissels arrived at Wheatlands Farm at Buffalo Gap in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley on June 1 and for the next 66 days they dominated the rap.</div>
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In our last post we noted the connection Kenn Kaufman sees between recent eastern breeding appearances of the Dickcissel and the stresses from drought and fire the bird faces in its traditional prairie nesting range. In 2011 drought choked the southern prairies, engulfing Texas plus a 200-mile margin, and arguably accounted for the Dickcissel irruption east of the Allegheny Mountains as the birds sought alternate breeding opportunities. This year the drought expanded northward, toasting crops and pastures across Nebraska, Iowa, and Wisconsin and compromising grassland nesting over an enlarged dry zone. And in 2012 the Dickcissel chorus at Buffalo Gap grew by many voices; upward of a dozen males sang on this farm of 160 acres of grassland, more than double the 2011 numbers. That level of Dickcissel breeding density is characteristic of the grassland sweet spots in Missouri and Kansas but is uncommon in the East. (Check Lang Elliot's comments and recordings at <a href="http://www.birdtunes.com/"><i>www.birdtunes.com</i></a>)</div>
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The U.S. Drought Monitor, maintained at the University of Nebraska in association with NOAA and USDA, observes regarding the 2012 episode,</div>
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<i> " The drought has inflicted, and is expected to continue to inflict, catastrophic economic ramifications for the affected states." </i></div>
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So, the drought sequence will likely continue, seemingly a component of global climate change. If 2013 is comparably dry in the prairie states and if the Dickcissels again seek nesting relief in the East, there will be little doubt of the Kaufman correlation. Would a record search show that eastward Dickcissel irruptions in earlier years were also the result of western weather stresses? At this point we are on notice of a likelihood that the Dickcissel will be needing welcome in such grasslands as remain in the East (after the massive twentieth-century abandonment of eastern farmland). In seeking breeding refuge to the east of its principal historic range, is the Dickcissel an early indicator species of climate change?</div>
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The Dickcissel has problems in the east which it did not have in its pre-Colombian prairie range where the main perils to nesting were bison hooves and fires; worse, of course, in dry years. Arriving in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley on June 1st of this year, the Dickcissels set up shop a month or more behind the Bobolinks and Meadowlarks. Eastern farmers cut hay in late May and early June. Hay made in early June on this farm this year would have contained Dickcissel nests; some other nests as well, but many of the other grassland obligates have brought off a brood by then and could better afford the loss than could the Dickcissels.</div>
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Most of the eastern grasslands available for breeding are those which farmers maintain for pasture or hay and the Dickcissels arrive at the wrong moment in the farming schedule. If they choose hay ground the nests go through the cutter. If they select lightly-grazed pasture, that is likely to be clipped for weed control in early July. A Dickcissel's best hope is to find a spot inaccessible to cutting equipment -- a wet or rocky place -- large enough to accommodate a territory.</div>
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That is another problem. Grassland birds including Dickcissels and Bobolinks are, in the terms of researchers, "area sensitive"; they need tracts of suitable habitat large enough to accommodate not just one territory, but several, perhaps many. You don't often find one pair of Dickcissels or Bobolinks (like many grassland birds, both are polygamous and sometimes polyandrous so the term "pair" applies loosely), you find a nesting cohort which requires a large tract of grassland; research suggests a minimum of 60 acres for Bobolinks. Dickcissels migrate together, claim adjacent territories, winter together, and perhaps know one another as individuals across their lives. A migrating group in search of accommodations doesn't just shed one or two pairs at each promising weed patch; the entire group stops when it finds a tract suitable to the tribal need. When nesting is finished, they decamp for Venezuela <i>en masse</i> as abruptly as they arrived. At Wheatlands Farm they departed on August 5th this year.</div>
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In 2012 this farm gave up a cutting of hay on 45 acres of alfalfa and orchard grass to accommodate the Dickcissels’ relaxed schedule. By the coincidence of a mild previous winter there was enough hay left over for the coming winter, assuming average weather, meaning no back-to-back three-foot snows. Such hospitality would normally be beyond the means of many farms, this one included, even with all hearts in the right place and all awarenesses attuned. Few farms can offer the largesse Dickcissels require of the eastern yeoman -- on the order of ten large round bales of hay per nest. By that crude estimate, a farm would sacrifice 250 cow days of winter feed in hosting one Dickcissel nest. But -- you don't get <i>one</i> nest; you get <i>some</i> nests or none.</div>
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The Dickcissels at Buffalo Gap outline a conservation challenge. The bird is persecuted with surfactants and other chemicals on its wintering grounds in Venezuela where grain farmers consider it a pest, as we once viewed the Carolina Parakeet. The Dickcissel is under pressure from drought and fire on its traditional North American grassland breeding grounds. So, we surmise, it has turned eastward for a chance to recruit and to sustain viable numbers. Here it runs into an adverse farming schedule in its principal nesting habitat. We must think of a way to accommodate all parties.</div>
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Michael Godfreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04612217373851849969noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4487249114209247370.post-61559711218880702872012-10-04T21:04:00.000-07:002012-10-25T06:53:05.291-07:00Buffalo Gap's Dickcissels, 2012<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
If you have Dickcissels in your pastures or if you pass their field with
your window down there will be little doubt of it, for the males take their
bright colors and loud voices to their advertisement perches and sing and counter-sing, hardly taking a breath break.
They arrive as a group and seize the grassland acoustics. Breeding males are loud and obvious and they generate a territorial din.
This year the Dickcissels arrived at Wheatlands Farm at Buffalo Gap in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley
on June 1 and for the next 66 days they dominated the rap.<br />
<br />
In our last post we noted the connection Kenn Kaufman sees between recent eastern
breeding appearances of the Dickcissel and the stresses from drought and fire
the bird faces in its traditional prairie nesting range. In 2011 drought
choked the southern prairies, engulfing Texas plus a 200-mile margin, and
arguably accounted for the Dickcissel irruption east of the Allegheny
Mountains as the birds sought alternate breeding opportunities. This year the
drought expanded northward, toasting crops and pastures across Nebraska, Iowa,
and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wisconsin and compromising grassland
nesting over an enlarged dry zone. And in 2012 the Dickcissel chorus at
Buffalo Gap grew by many voices; upward of a dozen males sang on this farm of
160 acres of grassland, more than double the 2011 numbers. That level of
Dickcissel breeding density is characteristic of the grassland sweet spots in
Missouri and Kansas but is uncommon in the East. (Check
Lang Elliot's comments and recordings at <a href="http://www.birdtunes.com/"><i>www.birdtunes.com</i></a>)<br />
<br />
The U.S. Drought Monitor, maintained at the University of Nebraska in
association with NOAA and USDA, observes regarding the 2012 episode,<br />
<br />
<i> " The drought has inflicted, and is expected to continue to
inflict, catastrophic economic ramifications for the affected states." </i><br />
<br />
So, the drought sequence will likely continue, seemingly a component of global climate
change. If 2013 is comparably dry in the prairie states and if the Dickcissels again seek
nesting relief in the East, there will be little doubt of the Kaufman
correlation. Would a record search show that eastward Dickcissel
irruptions in earlier years were also the result of western weather stresses?
At this point we are on notice of a likelihood that the Dickcissel will be
needing welcome in such grasslands as remain in the East (after the massive
twentieth-century abandonment of eastern farmland). In seeking breeding refuge to the
east of its principal historic range, is the Dickcissel an early indicator
species of climate change?<br />
<br />
The Dickcissel has problems in the east which it did not have in its
pre-Colombian prairie range where the main perils to nesting were bison hooves and fires; worse, of course, in dry years. Arriving
in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley on June 1st of this year, the Dickcissels set
up shop a month or more behind the Bobolinks and Meadowlarks. Eastern farmers cut
hay in late May and early June. Hay made in early June on this farm this
year would have contained Dickcissel nests; some other nests as well, but
many of the other grassland obligates have brought off a brood by then and
could better afford the loss than could the Dickcissels.<br />
<br />
Most of the eastern grasslands available for breeding are those which farmers maintain
for pasture or hay and the Dickcissels arrive at the wrong moment in the farming
schedule. If they choose hay ground the nests go through the cutter. If they select
lightly-grazed pasture, that is likely to be clipped for weed control in early
July. A Dickcissel's best hope is to find a spot inaccessible to cutting equipment -- a wet
or rocky place -- large enough to accommodate a territory.<br />
<br />
That is another problem. Grassland birds including Dickcissels and
Bobolinks are, in the terms of researchers, "area sensitive"; they
need tracts of suitable habitat large enough to accommodate not just one
territory, but several, perhaps many. You don't often find one pair
of Dickcissels or Bobolinks (like many grassland birds, both are
polygamous and sometimes polyandrous so the term "pair" applies loosely),
you find a nesting cohort which requires a large tract of grassland; research
suggests a minimum of 60 acres for Bobolinks. Dickcissels migrate together,
claim adjacent territories, winter together, and perhaps know one another as
individuals across their lives. A migrating group in search of accommodations
doesn't just shed one or two pairs at each promising weed patch; the entire
group stops when it finds a tract suitable to the tribal need. When nesting is
finished, they decamp for Venezuela <i>en masse</i> as abruptly as they
arrived. At Wheatlands Farm they departed on August 5th this year.<br />
<br />
In 2012 this farm gave up a cutting of hay on 45 acres of alfalfa and
orchard grass to accommodate the Dickcissels’ relaxed schedule. By the
coincidence of a mild previous winter there was enough hay left over for the coming
winter, assuming average weather, meaning no back-to-back three-foot snows.
Such hospitality would normally be beyond the means of many farms, this one
included, even with all hearts in the right place and all awarenesses
attuned. Few farms can offer the largesse Dickcissels require of the eastern
yeoman -- on the order of ten large round bales of hay per nest. By that crude
estimate, a farm would sacrifice 250 cow days of winter feed in hosting one
Dickcissel nest. But -- you don't get <i>one</i> nest; you get <i>some</i> nests
or none.<br />
<br />
The Dickcissels at Buffalo Gap outline a conservation challenge. The bird is
persecuted with surfactants and other chemicals on its wintering grounds in
Venezuela where grain farmers consider it a pest, as we once viewed
the Carolina Parakeet. The Dickcissel is under pressure from drought and fire on its
traditional North American grassland breeding grounds. So, we surmise, it has turned eastward for a chance to recruit and to sustain viable
numbers. Here it runs into an adverse farming schedule in its principle
nesting habitat. We must think of a way to accommodate all parties.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Michael Godfreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04612217373851849969noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4487249114209247370.post-24034634965149905932011-07-22T14:56:00.000-07:002011-08-04T16:54:27.367-07:00Dispatches from Buffalo Gap<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi55vyocgMELFgwWtycn4m_TCIpyzfqgyYrd2vDCj3UDE0Ynjy2RfNYRv7itlc1seWwjtFkNnSAnLM0BGdbvRPnry1SWBYxdJqPz-IGjEwSKUVcWlCKrQebeR1EgztU834-vp7VHjtufNKW/s1600/Dickcissel+%25282%2529+resized.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi55vyocgMELFgwWtycn4m_TCIpyzfqgyYrd2vDCj3UDE0Ynjy2RfNYRv7itlc1seWwjtFkNnSAnLM0BGdbvRPnry1SWBYxdJqPz-IGjEwSKUVcWlCKrQebeR1EgztU834-vp7VHjtufNKW/s320/Dickcissel+%25282%2529+resized.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><a name='more'></a><br />
<div align="center" class="" style="color: black; text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Male Dickcissel singing near nest on Wheatlands Farm</span></div><div align="center" class="separator" style="color: black; text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Swoope, VA</span></div><div align="center" class="separator" style="color: black; text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">July 10, 2011</span></div><div align="center" class="separator" style="color: black; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span>In olden times bison grazed in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, as the written histories chronicle and as the place names tell us. As I write, Buffalo Gap controls the view out my window as it once controlled the lives and economics of the peoples who lived here between the melting of the Wisconsin Ice and the arrival of Europeans. Through Buffalo Gap, European settlers cut a roadway to the Ohio River called the Parkersburg Turnpike, then in 1853 the Virginia Central Railroad (now CSX), passing through this farm on its way to the Gap, connected tidewater Virginia with the world beyond the Allegheny Mountains. The next water gap up the ridges to penetrate the Appalachians is the one cut by the Potomac River at Harpers Ferry, 100 miles to the north. The comparable gaps to the south would be those of the James River and its tributaries.<br />
<br />
But in a sense there are no gaps in the Alleghenies comparable to Buffalo Gap for it is possible, as peoples and bison have discovered, to trek through the maze of the Appalachian highlands by entering Buffalo Gap at the western margin of the Shenandoah Valley and ultimately finding the eastern edge of the prairie lands across the Ohio River. There is an argument that New York’s Mohawk River similarly cuts the highlands for access to the western grasslands, a geography which made possible the Erie Canal and the enduring commercial primacy of New York City. The buffalo reached eastward to their eponymous town on Lake Erie but do not seem to have taken advantage of the Mohawk passage. So, during historic times Buffalo Gap may present the only example of American Bison regularly penetrating the entire width of the Appalachian Mountains to access eastern grasslands.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7FZ7qVb_VqCw45TwFp5tku9j2bL5b8uc0-Q3kRgIMuRDUbYOkbEgCZPp7JItxA-x7HeP1HGEnGeqJ-2KBesIi04z9Is0HjMTftVEtBbinzm8B7C5SQjIelUF9b84S9sC_WSmLskoKVQM/s1600/DSC_4580+resized.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7FZ7qVb_VqCw45TwFp5tku9j2bL5b8uc0-Q3kRgIMuRDUbYOkbEgCZPp7JItxA-x7HeP1HGEnGeqJ-2KBesIi04z9Is0HjMTftVEtBbinzm8B7C5SQjIelUF9b84S9sC_WSmLskoKVQM/s320/DSC_4580+resized.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="color: black; text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Buffalo Gap</span></div><div style="color: black; text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Village of Swoope, Virginia between cattle and Gap</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: none;"> </span> </div>For now, I am powerless before the urge to speculate that Buffalo Gap offered a historic avenue connecting the life schemes of the East with the great grasslands of the interior. The presence of the bison suggest this connection, for the bison must have (or probably did, or may have) pioneered their way eastward from the prairie grasslands. Once here, to speculate further, the great ungulates and their human sponsors enhanced the grasslands in the western Shenandoah Valley, particularly the section (where I live) lying in the deep rain shadow created by North Mountain of which the local prominence is Elliott Knob at 4464 feet. The annual rainfall here is just 35 inches; ten inches below Virginia's average, and closer to a grassland moisture regime than to that of deciduous forest. Still, plenty of trees grow in the rain-shadowed Upper (southern) Shenandoah Valley, and they must have encroached upon the grasslands. Therefore, goes my argument, the Indians must have maintained grasslands here with fire, for prior to the chemical warfare now practiced to suppress broad-leafed plants, fire was the only means of maintaining grassland; that is, of arresting the normal course of plant succession which would eventually have reforested the area. The bison spilled out through Buffalo Gap to winter in the Shenandoah Valley then returned to graze the high pastures in the Alleghenies in summer. That is my theory; underpinned by<br />
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<div style="text-indent: 0.5in;">- a passage across the Appalachian Highlands accessible through Buffalo Gap, </div><div style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div style="text-indent: 0.5in;">- the name Buffalo Gap and references to bison here in written history, </div><div style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin: 0in 0in 5pt 0.5in;">- the locality’s reduced rainfall owing to the rain shadow of Elliott Knob, a rainfall regime which would have helped the Indians maintain the grasslands, and</div><div style="margin-left: 0.5in;">- a certain grassland bird which keeps returning, possibly to check out present conditions against those encoded in its genetic endowment.</div><br />
I am holding a signed and cherished copy of the 1947 edition of Roger Tory Peterson's <u>A Field Guide to the Birds.</u> Regarding the Dickcissel, an obligate grassland bird, Peterson says " Breeds in Prairie States e. to ... w. Ohio..." Peterson revised his guides in 1980, separating eastern and western volumes and adding detailed range maps prepared by his wife, Virginia. I recall her studio, romantically adjacent to Roger's, stacked with maps and reports from which she sifted her interpolations of the birds’ ranges; Virginia Peterson took her cartography seriously. She shows the Dickcissel's fundamental breeding range as the prairie lands between the Rockies and the Appalachians, but she added two dots suggesting disjunct ranges east of the Appalachians which she calls "Localized Breeding Areas". One of those dots, the larger, appears to be centered over Fredrick, Maryland. The smaller dot covers my farm and a few (dozen) others in the lee of Elliott Knob and within sight of Buffalo Gap.<br />
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Roger Peterson wrote the first field guide to birds and in so doing presented to us the field guide concept. Before the Peterson guide appeared in 1934, if you were interested in birds you loaded up with number 8 shot and blew from the branches a hatfull of migrating warblers. In the view of many, Peterson started the conservation movement by giving all of us access to non-lethal birding and by making nature study a considered passion rather than a blood sport. While Peterson influenced many worthy successors, his depictive mantle devolved upon an accomplished interpreter of natural history named Kenn Kaufman. Kenn published his <u>Field Guide to the Birds of North America</u> with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2005, an effort now developed into a series of guides to life forms no less inspiring than the series edited by Peterson, but with updated perspectives.<br />
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Kenn's guide shows the Dickcissel's core breeding range as approximately the original prairies, with shadings of intensity and broken lines for irregular expansions. In a recent conversation he described the bird as "eruptive", suggesting it may, at its pleasure, show up in substantial numbers outside its accustomed breeding range. He offers an explanation for this year's eruption, perhaps based on the bird's displeasure,<br />
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"..<i>.this is an interesting season for grassland birds. I think it's driven at least partly by the extreme drought in the southwest and the western plains ... only a part of the Dickcissel's normal breeding range is under severe drought conditions, but it seems to be enough to have caused a shift, and a number of areas farther east are reporting higher numbers than usual. Certainly they're unusually numerous in Ohio. "</i><br />
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For now I will call the Dickcissel’s 2011 eastern showing (the first on this farm during the present millennium) the Buffalo Gap Eruption and I hope that you will prove me wrong. I hope the Dickcissel compensates for its western stresses by nesting widely in our remaining eastern grasslands and that you will cup hands to ears to listen for the "dick...CIS,CIS,CIS" signature as you pass pasture. It likes tall, uncut grass (not pasture grazed hard or recently-cut hay ground) and I do not hear it calling here in pastures which have been herbicided. Please share your findings; is the bird breeding in substantial numbers outside Ginny Peterson's Buffalo Gap Dot? Is it breeding in the Fredrick Dot? Dickcissels singing on territory anywhere east of the Appalachians (as they once did, if sporadically) could be important, possibly as harbingers of climate change or perhaps in support of certain theories which offer the bird as an indicator species for historical grasslands.<br />
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Best regards,<br />
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Michael GodfreyMichael Godfreyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04612217373851849969noreply@blogger.com1