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| Freeman fields on the Edge of Appalachia Preserve holds at least 30 Henslow's sparrow territories. |
For many years, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has been managing old fields on the preserve, trying to maintain them as grassland habitats. Without management, these areas would quickly revert to successional woodlands. The plants and animals now established in these grassland habitats would move away if the habitat changed, so we would like to keep them around if possible. One way to monitor the success of the grassland composition is to record the bird species breeding in them. Many birds chose specific habitats in which they breed. If these birds are using the managed fields, we know the management of the fields is successful.
So this summer, we chose 3 sites to start monitoring and banding birds, capturing them using mist nets.
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| Mist nets are set up strategically in the grassland fields to capture breeding birds. |
With the help of two Cincinnati Museum Center employees: Heather Farrington and Ann Wegman, and volunteer bird bander Cheryl Dykstra, we began our first long-term banding project on the preserve. Heather proposed this project in order to help TNC regulate the effectiveness of their management practices to encourage breeding by specific grassland birds.
This project's methods are to simply visit each site every season with 13 mist nets and catch and process as many birds that fly into them. Sounds simple, but we found that our target birds do not move around the fields very much in the summer.
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| The fine threads of the nets are difficult for the birds to see early in the morning. |
The target birds for this project are Henslow's sparrow, Centronyx henslowi, and grasshopper sparrow, Ammodramus savannarum, but any birds utilizing the grasslands will be banded. Once banded, we can then determine that the birds are indeed using the fields and hopefully any recaptures in the coming years give us insight into which birds come back each spring.
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| A total of 13 mist nets were used in each field to spread out the captures in the large fields. |
There is a difference in birding through binoculars, and seeing these birds in hand. When seen in hand, you see details not observable from afar. Some of the birds were quite tricky to tell in juvenile plumage. Each bird caught is quickly removed from the net, bagged and taken to the processing table. There it is weighed, aged, sexed and given a small ankle band with an identification number on it. This way, if caught again in the future, we will know where it came from.
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| This yellow-breasted chat, Icteria virens, was not happy to be caught in the net. |
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| Processing table is brought into the field to collect data from each bird. This Henslow's sparrow (Centronyx henslowi) is letting us know its age by its wing feather colors. |
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A Henslow's sparrow (Centronyx henslowi)
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Two of the three chosen sites had singing Henslow's sparrows in them this year. The third usually has Henslow's present, but this year it was void of this rare grassland bird. This is why we chose this bird to monitor. It seems to have very specific requirements for breeding, and we have a hard time predicting which fields they will return to. As we collect more data from these grassland fields, and figure out which fields are used annually by these birds, it will help us decide which management practices are working.
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A Juvenile blue grosbeak, Passerina caerulea, caught in its transforming stage between brown and its adult blue plumage.
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| Juvenile blue grosbeak. Photo by. Rich McCarty |
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Eastern Kingbird, Tyrannus tyrannus, caught shows its reddish feathers on the crown, usually displayed when agitated.
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| By looking at the shape of first primary feather, the book in the background shows that this E. kingbird caught was a female. |
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The tiny prairie warbler, Setophaga discolor, showing its band above its right foot. And who would have guessed the bottoms of their feet were yellow?
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The identification of this yellow warbler, Setophaga petechia, had us fooled for a bit.
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| An orchard oriole, Icterus spurius, found its way into our nets. |
In all, 67 birds representing 21 species were caught and banded. A few birds hit the net and escaped somehow, but 67 captures sounds pretty good for 4 trap mornings in 3 hot fields. Most importantly, 16 Henslow's sparrows were captured including some juveniles. And 1 grasshopper sparrow was caught even though no grasshopper sparrows were heard in the fields leading up to the netting dates.
Thanks to the expertise of our 3 bird banding friends, the preserve is on its way to learning more about the birds of our managed grasslands and soon, which of these birds return to them.
Posted by: Mark Zloba
