Giving songbirds something to sing about

For birds, migration is hard. Really hard. Many migratory species travel thousands of miles through all weather conditions with limited food resources. While many mysteries still remain around bird migration, scientists are learning more and more about the whys and hows of this incredible phenomenon. And it has a group of scientists in the Northeast asking: can we make migration a little easier for some songbirds by enhancing their favored habitats?

In 2015, a collaborative project began between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the University of Massachusetts, and the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station. By collecting data on bird health and by tracking movements of migrating songbirds in the Connecticut River Valley, the team hopes to determine the best habitat types for certain migratory birds that stop over in the area.

To gather this information, the team has been capturing woodland birds during spring and fall migrations using mist nets. Once captured, birds are banded and several measurements are taken including wing and beak size. Blood is drawn from some target species and brought back to a lab for analysis. The research team is getting a picture of the birds’ overall health by determining body composition (fat, lean mass, and water content), and instantaneous refueling rates which help determine if birds are gaining or losing mass during a stopover.

Biologist measuring a songbird included in the study

Banding

least flycatcher

Bird ready for release

Preparing the nanotag

Nanotag placed on the hermit thrush

Additionally, select birds are fitted with NanoTag transmitters which allow biologists to track the birds’ movements. NanoTags are tiny tags that emit a signal that can be tracked with telemetry equipment. Biologists can identify individual birds and their locations for months using the devices that are attached to the birds with a tiny elastic harness. Among the species targeted in this study are Swainson’s thrushes, northern waterthrushes, yellow-rumped warblers, Lincoln’s sparrows, and white-throated sparrows. Data collection for this project wrapped up this spring; and over the past four years, biologists were able to band nearly 3,000 birds and fit over 200 target birds with NanoTag transmitters.

This study has been taking place within the Silvio O. Conte National Wildlife Refuge. The Refuge encompasses an impressive 36,000 acres of the Connecticut River watershed in the states of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. The team has focused its capture and banding efforts on old-field sites within the Conte Refuge for this study, including the Fort River Trail area in Hadley, MA and the Orchard Hill section of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA. Each site is less than 1/3 of a mile from the Connecticut River.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist, Troy Wilson, says, “We are interested in how physiological condition affects performance during the life stage of migration. Condition metrics – fat, lean mass, water – are used as indicators of the heath of birds, as well as a means to determine the quality of the habitats they occupy as they refuel from one location to the next.” The end goal is to determine how the Connecticut River Valley and the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge can be a better host for migrating birds. The team hopes to be able to make recommendations for habitat management, specifically where forested areas should be converted to early successional habitat through forest management, and where old fields and shrublands might be managed for specific plant species and habitat structure that provide the highest benefits to birds during migration.

Jennifer Lynch Murphy is a wildlife biologist with C&S Engineers, specializing bird-aircraft collisions. She lives in Sunderland, MA with her husband, Kevin, and dog, Levi.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ladies and Gentlemen…The Beetles!

While Ed Sullivan was introducing a group of ‘beetles’ to the United States back in 1964, there is another group of beetles that were already thriving here.  And even though their ‘band’ had begun to break up in the late 1980’s, it seems that they are slowly making their way back into the spotlight with the help of dedicated fans.  The puritan tiger beetle (Cicindela Puritana) has been listed as a ‘threatened’ species since 1990, and since 1993 great efforts came underway to help in the recovery process for this tiny species.  Once thriving throughout its historic habitat in the Connecticut River watershed from Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and areas in Maryland throughout the Chesapeake Bay, this species has been reduced to two primary locations: the Chesapeake Bay and single, isolated populations in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

The puritan tiger beetle has been named for their behavior in how they catch their prey, by running it down and capturing it with long, powerful mandibles (jaws). Photo: Sue Wojtowicz/USFWS

Why Such Big Efforts for Such a Small Creature?

Since the enactment of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, many wildlife species have been placed on a list that categorizes them as either threatened or endangered.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is dedicated to protecting all species on that list, which includes the puritan tiger beetle; and the Service has established recovery efforts that will bring some hope for this small species.  To do this, a team of scientists, students, and volunteers alike have come together to help maintain remaining populations from disappearing forever. This summer, students and volunteers will be surveying the two isolated populations along the Connecticut River in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and one new site in Vermont in hopes of releasing more Puritan Tiger Beetles back to the wild.

The male (with the red marking) is smaller in size compared to the female. Photo: Rodger Gwiazdowski

The larve (right) is much smaller in contrast to the adult. About the size of a small wad of sand, the larva will spend more than a month under water during flood season. Photo: Rodger Gwiazdowski

The puritan tiger beetle is no different than any other species that are important to their habitat.  They, too, are part of the same ecosystem that we as humans should strive more to coexist with.  But to coexist with a species less than 1 inch in length can be challenging if people do not know they even exist.  That is where the dedicated conservation team comes in – as they establish baseline ecological research, they’re also spreading the word about the beetle, which is increasing curiosity among the public.  By showing people some of the hands on work being done in the field, and gaining the knowledge of where the beetles live, what they eat, and how they populate new habitat the conservation team will play a big part in understanding how beetles and humans can coexist together. Watching students and volunteers talk about the puritan tiger beetle recovery project to the public brings out the wildlife enthusiast in anyone, and to observe them in action together with the beetles in their habitat is to observe a conservation milestone in the making.

Please stay tuned to our next puritan tiger beetle blog post – where we focus on the members of the conservation team.

This farmer’s got your goat

After living in a densely populated refugee camp in Nepal for nearly 20 years, Chuda Dhaurali considered carefully when asked where he wanted to resettle with his family.

“We learned a lot of things about Vermont, and we decided that’s where we wanted to go,” he said.

Dhaurali was drawn to Vermont for the same reasons many people have been for generations: rugged mountains and fertile river valleys.

Originally from a farming family in Bhutan, a country on the eastern edge of the Himalayas, he hoped he would find an opportunity to farm again when he moved to Vermont in 2009. He found that and much more at Pine Island Farm.

Goats on the heels of farmer Chuda Dhaurali at feeding time at Pine Island Farm. Credit: Katie Kain/FWS

Born out of a partnership between the Vermont Land Trust, the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, and the Vermont Goat Collaborative, Pine Island Farm was established in response to a need for halal meat from the growing population of new Americans who have been resettled in communities around Burlington through the United Nations Refugee Agency.

As the pilot goat farmer on the 230-acre property that was once a cow dairy, Dhaurali helps sustain the agricultural traditions of his new community, the cultural traditions of his fellow new Americans, and the watershed that supports them all. Through the U.S. Department of Agriculture Conservation Reserve Enhancement (CREP) Program, Pine Island gave up seven acres of land for the creation of riparian buffer along the Winooski River, with planting and monitoring help from the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program.

Dhaurali’s story is featured in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Nature’s Good Neighbors series, which highlights people across the U.S. who depend on the land as much as the land depends on them. These modern-day stewards of the land are working with nature to make a home for people and wildlife.

Click here to read the full story.