Lindsey Papasian is a reporter with the Community News Service, part of the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.
NEW HAVEN — Hyla Howe trudged through the high grass. She scanned the ground and took note: red clover, sedge, canary reed. Each plant said something about whether the field would be a good spot for bobolinks.
Suddenly came a wave of R2-D2 chirps as 40 or more the birds were flushed from their positions in the grass, swirling through the air singing.
“This is amazing!” Howe said.
The birds looked like dots dancing overhead. The fledglings were easy to spot in their clumsier flight patterns, and with binoculars, the adult males were clear in their distinctive black and white plumage, the adult females sporting brown feathers with yellow breasts.
After a few transects of the field, it was time to go back to the landowner to tell them the good news: The birds had successfully nested, and it was safe to mow.
That’s a day in the life of Howe, hired this year as the first outreach coordinator for the Boboblink Project, an effort run by Mass Audubon, Audubon Vermont and New Hampshire Audubon. She works for the Massachusetts outfit specifically.
Grassland birds like the bobolink are declining faster than any other group of birds in New England. In the last 50 years, over 75% of the species have seen population losses. Some of the worst hit are bobolinks and eastern meadowlarks, two of 10 species of grassland birds in Vermont. They build their nests on the ground, which makes them vulnerable to haying and mowing in fields.
The Bobolink Project pays the owners of these fields, often farmers, to conduct or pay for bird-friendly management practices. The birds get time and habitat to nest while the landowners get some compensation for letting them do so.
The money to pay participating landowners comes from private donations.
“You don’t think of wildlife as an agricultural product until you remove native prairie, then you kind of have to think about wildlife as an agricultural product,” said Howe. “Essentially, the landowners are raising grassland birds.”
On Howe’s early morning visit to New Haven, landowner Steve Shores was thrilled to hear about the successful nests.
“I am glad you are seeing birds in these fields,” Shores said.
After a catch-up about the farm, life and all its changes, Howe and Shores said goodbye until next year, when she’ll come back to check on the field again.
Every current or prospective piece of land in the project needs to be surveyed yearly.
To be a part of the effort, farmers must alter their haying processes.
That’s done by either delaying the first cut of the season — no disturbance in the field until after July 15 — or delaying a second cut — no disturbance in the field between May 20 and July 24. The delays allow enough time for grassland birds to nest safely.
The birds need enough space as well as enough cover to protect their hatchlings until they are able to fly.
To get their population estimates, scientists have been out surveying fields, which includes analyzing vegetation and counting female birds to estimate the number of nests in the area using a formula created by Allan Strong, a University of Vermont professor who directs the school’s wildlife and fisheries biology program.
The biggest driver of grassland bird declines has been changes in land use.
The first major land-use transformation affecting grassland bird populations in Vermont today was the demise of sheep farming starting in the 19th century.
Vermont’s sheep boom started in 1811 and lasted until the middle of the century. By 1840 there were over a million sheep in the state, requiring an enormous amount of pasture.
Two hundred years later, the landscape of Vermont is nearly 80% forest: Many of the sheep farms were left to fallow and have reforested since. The dairy farms that came in after the sheep craze required less open land — and themselves have declined since.
When farms go out of business and no one’s around to maintain the fields, shrubs and tree seedlings start to take over.
As trees reemerged in disused land, there were less and less grasslands where birds such as the bobolink could build their nests.
The second land-use factor causing grassland bird decline is the intensified management of fields.
“Fields are being cut earlier than they used to, more frequently than they used to,” Strong said.
“Bobolinks and meadowlarks don’t really have a chance,” he said.
More than 95% of eastern meadowlarks have disappeared in New England, according to the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, and it’s now a threatened species. Bobolink populations have dropped 60-75% continent-wide.
“There are fields I’m seeing now with fewer and fewer boblinks,” said Margaret Fowle, senior conservationist at the Vermont Audubon.
The Mass Audubon hired Howe to manage the Bobolink Project, do more targeted outreach to farmers and provide more opportunities for education and assistance.
The landowners engaging in the Bobolink Project are excited to help conserve the birds while also getting some money for their participation.
“They pay me not to mow, and I don’t mow anyway, so why not get a little money and save the birds?” said Shores, the New Haven farmer.
He was contacted by the project to consider entering his field into conservation.
Marilyn Marks, a prospective participant who lives down the road from Shores, said she wishes the state would provide landowners a tax credit for maintaining their fields for conservation — expanding a current credit system that cuts rates for land deemed for agricultural use.
The effort is not without drawbacks. Delayed cutting of fields could allow invasive plant species to seed.
According to Fowle, invasives such as poison parsnip, bedstraw and spotted knapweed have been moving into these grasslands.
“Fields abandoned, left to fallow, will over time become meadows and then forest in Vermont. It’s a common misconception that fields should be left completely alone,” said Howe
Kevin Tolan, staff biologist at Vermont Center for Ecostudies, sees it as a catch-22. “Can’t cut too much because it’ll destroy their nests,” he said. “Otherwise, if you let the invasives seed, they can take over.”
Howe, as the outreach coordinator responsible for surveying the fields, has been spending the season so far meeting with farmers and landowners and checking the viability of their fields for nests.
Viability of the fields is checked by a few different measures. When walking through the fields, Howe takes note of vegetation, management practices and looks out for birds.
The vegetation is important to pay attention to since it can reveal habitat quality. For example, an overabundance of sedges indicates that the field may be too wet for bobolinks to nest on the ground.
And if grass is not dense enough, it puts the bird nests at risk for predation.
Howe thinks of grassland systems in a similar way to forests, with canopies, understories and overstories. The arrangement of cover needs to be right for bobolinks and their hatchlings to succeed.
“It’s like an interesting puzzle,” she said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of an invasive plant species.
