These are some great ideas and comments, Dave, Geo, and Suan. I'm having a hard time keeping track of the different chains of discussion on this topic, so if this is repeated for some of you, I apologize. It's interesting to see, too, that we have had some overlapping ideas. One thing that we are trying as farmers is leaving some of our fields fallow in grass/clover, even for several years. We fit this into our organic crop rotations, and this helps gives the soil a rest. We can do this as we are organic, and have the "luxury" of renting enough acres to farm, and some land owners are willing to rent their land to us for less income to have it organic.
Onother thing we do already (like Geo suggests), but we have never tested to know how it works: make hay-production fields smaller than Bobolinks prefer to discourage them from setting up breeding territories. This could work well (possibly) on slopes where we also farm using strips of smaller “fields” (of alternating types of crops across the slope in narrower strips), which is done in order to help prevent erosion and soil loss, as there are always areas of soil that are covered by crop and not bare soil, which is more susceptible to erosion. We just don't know how to tell if it "makes" the birds nest elsewhere? Both of these strip and cover-cropping methods are encouraged by NRCS and farmers can get paid cash per acre to use them! That is one carrot! These methods could only be offered, and made available to people who are interested. Farmers come in all shapes and sizes, with all kinds of priorites and concerns, and we know farmers who are not interested in the NRSC payments, event though it's "free" money for them. Thor and I would be willing to try locating and marking nests in fields as well, if you think it's worth it. We have a 23-acre fallow grass/clover field where I saw a Bobolink carrying food last Thursday. We could trial how the nest finding and flagging system could work, as we're not planning on mowing that field until late, and probably not at all this year for a crop of hay. I don't have time to organize and manage this, but am happy to help as I can, so Suan - if you are willing to organize it, we can see what we can do. And Anne - you bring up perfect issues concerning this method! cheers, Rachel ________________________________ From: bounce-125722353-81221...@list.cornell.edu <bounce-125722353-81221...@list.cornell.edu> on behalf of Geo Kloppel <geoklop...@gmail.com> Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2021 10:40 PM To: CayugaBirds-L b <CAYUGABIRDS-L@cornell.edu> Subject: Re: [cayugabirds-l] Fields being mowed. I’ve been musing along a different line, wondering if a preemptive approach is possible. It takes time to mow the big fields that grassland nesters favor, and the hay farmer can’t mow all of them simultaneously. The work of haying season has to begin somewhere, and start early enough that the farmer can get through it all. So each year some field will be selected to go first, and another second, and the rest must wait their turns. Clearly some fields that are later in the queue can produce a crop of fledglings before it’s their turn to be mowed; otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation. So, suppose for the moment that the decision about which fields to mow early could be made before nesting had even begun. If there was then some way to discourage the birds from selecting those particular fields to nest in, the effect would be to direct them to the fields slated for later mowing... -Geo -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ -- -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
