The month of May is for the birds
World Migratory Bird Day is celebrated on the second Saturday of May in Canada and the U.S.
World Migratory Bird Day is celebrated on the second Saturday of May in Canada and the U.S., recognizing the approximately 50 billion birds are currently hopping, flying or swimming across our planet. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, of the 650+ species of breeding birds in North America, more than half of them are migratory. For some, their yearly migration can cover thousands of miles. Arctic terns, for example, undertake the longest migration of any animal from start to finish — from their Arctic breeding grounds in Alaska and Canada to Antarctica and back, it's a distance of around 25,000 miles. For reference, the equatorial circumference of Earth is 24,901 miles! For an interesting read, check out Cornell’s “Basics of Bird Migration.”
Supporting these remarkable creatures means protecting their habitat and breeding grounds — and that’s the type of work being done by land trusts across the country.
Grassland bird conservation in Maine
Sebasticook Regional Land Trust in Maine received a grant from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Land Trust Bird Conservation Initiative to help restore grassland bird habitats contaminated with PFAS and other so-called forever chemicals. The land trust is working to protect bobolinks and other grassland birds at its Richardson Memorial Preserve — grassland birds most in need of conservation like bobolinks, savannah sparrows and Eastern meadowlarks require a sizable acreage of open fields.
Bobolinks travel about 12,500 miles round-trip yearly, one of the longest migrations of any songbird. From their breeding grounds in southern Canada and the northern U.S., they fly in groups through Florida and across the Gulf of Mexico toward their wintering grounds in South America.
In December 2021, the agricultural fields on the Richardson Preserve were found to be contaminated with PFAS and unusable for food production. But in a case of turning lemons into lemonade, Sebasticook Land Trust plans to use its Cornell funding to maintain early successional stage grassland habitat at the preserve, promote citizen science with ongoing eBird monitoring to assess numbers of bobolinks, produce educational materials for public use and offer grassland bird-focused events. They will also collaborate on research into the effects of PFAS on natural communities and explore the mitigation of those effects through new technologies.
“Grassland birds are among the fastest-declining bird groups in the Northeast. Over the last 50 years most have seen major losses across New England,” said Tom Aversa, chair of Sebasticook's board of directors, in the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. “Bobolinks have declined by as much as 75%, and more than 95% of meadowlarks have disappeared from our meadows.”
“This grant from Cornell Lab of Ornithology allows us to advance management to benefit grassland birds while advancing efforts to understand how we can best utilize fields impacted by historic use of PFAS-contaminated fertilizer.”
Protecting agricultural land and bird habitat in Montana
In Frenchtown, Mont., more than 100 acres of agricultural land and bird habitat are set to be protected by what’s called the Jette Farm-Grass Valley project. The project is located in what the National Audubon Society has identified as the Clark Fork River-Grass Valley Important Bird Area.
“A 2023 bird survey identified 48 different bird species on the property,” Ben Horan, associate director at the accredited Five Valleys Land Trust in Missoula, Mont., told the Missoula Current. “In 2016, it was also identified as an Important Bird Area of Continental Importance due to the Lewis’ woodpecker populations. This property in particular is a high-quality habitat for short-eared owls, as well as seasonal riparian habitat along the irrigation canal.”
The property was donated by its owners and will be protected from development in perpetuity by a conservation easement to be held by the land trust.
Forest habitat preserved in Maryland
A 106-acre farm near Chestertown, Md., on the Delmarva Peninsula along the Chesapeake Bay, will now be preserved forever by a conservation easement held by the accredited Eastern Shore Land Conservancy. The conservancy partnered with Maryland Environmental Trust and the landowners, Doug and Sue West, on the project, which will preserve not only important agricultural land but important bird habitat as well.
From the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, via the Chestertown Spy:
Bridging two other Eastern Shore Land Conservancy easements in Quaker Neck, a Chestertown area with a rich Quaker history, the new easement protects both working cropland and non-tidal forested wetlands that are now part of contiguous habitat for forest interior dwelling species of birds, or FIDS. These bird species require large, connected blocks of forest to breed safely and successfully after their long migration from South and Central America. According to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, “The key to maintaining suitable breeding habitat for FIDS, and halting or reversing their declines, is the protection of extensive, unbroken forested areas throughout the region.”
Back in 2000, the office of then-Governor Martin O’Malley released a report titled “A Guide to the Conservation of Forest Interior Dwelling Birds in the Chesapeake Bay Critical Area,” describing FIDS and their decline:
Forest interior dwelling birds (FIDS) require large forest areas to breed successfully and maintain viable populations. This diverse group includes colorful songbirds — tanagers, warblers, vireos — that breed in North America and winter in the Caribbean, Central and South America, as well as residents and short-distance migrants — woodpeckers, hawks and owls… Although most of these birds are still fairly common, populations of some forest bird species have been declining during the last 30-40 years… Some species, such as the wood thrush and the cerulean warbler, are rapidly declining.
These are just a handful of stories of land trusts working to protect the nesting and breeding habitats of our feathered friends — to find a land trust in your area and see what they're up to, make sure to check out our Find a Land Trust tool!