Hi All, Reuben Stoltzfus called me yesterday evening and clarified a few points about his experience with mowing v grassland birds.
He agrees with all the folks who said that walking through fields to look for nests is not a good idea due to ineffectiveness and creating paths for predators. I forget whether he included trampling the hay, but I’m guessing that’s also an issue. He was able to avoid mowing Bobolinks in part because of the machinery he uses which, as I understand it, moves more slowly than non-Amish farmers’ machines, allows him to see & hear birds while he makes a strong effort to do so, and allows him to react quickly enough to stop or turn aside to avoid mowing the immediate area where a female Bobolink has just flushed. I forgot to ask how big an area he left around each flushed female and how effective it seemed in allowing fledging to succeed or whether it seemed that the exposure led to them being taken by predators. He found that within his 10 acre field Bobolink nests appeared to be concentrated only about 40 to 80 feet from the edge of the field in most instances, which seems paradoxical given that Bobolinks require large fields. He did not find nests of Grasshopper Sparrows. The question of how to balance hay production with grassland bird nesting is not easy, as the discussion over the last several days has demonstrated. Among the ironies is that the eastern US would have very few areas of grasslands large enough for several species if not for hay production, yet if cutting schedules prevent reproduction, then these places are a trap for the birds. Meanwhile, agriculture has made the vast majority of the prairies which were those grassland birds’ original range unavailable for nesting. - - Dave Nutter -- 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/ --
