Bird Conservation

Introducing WCT’s Strategic Plan

February 14, 2023 By Communications Team

STRATEGIC PLAN | 2023-2025
Saving, Studying, and Sharing Land, Water, and Habitat

WHERE HAVE WE BEEN?

Land conservation efforts have been underway in the Willistown area for over 40 years. A satellite program of Brandywine Conservancy, formed in 1979, was known as the Willistown Area Conservation Program. With the encouragement of the community and key local conservation leaders, Willistown Conservation Trust (WCT) became an independent, community based land trust in 1996 with a committed and active Board of Trustees.

Using the Crum, Ridley, and Darby Creek watersheds as a boundary guide, WCT’s traditional program area encompasses 28,000 acres in Chester County and portions of Delaware County, and is located approximately 20 miles west of Philadelphia. Despite tremendous growth pressures that have converted many neighboring communities into vast tracts of sprawl development, the WCT program area still remains largely an oasis of green space.

Successful land conservation and stewardship paved the way for major growth within the organization. Since its founding, WCT has grown to include a suite of activities focused on science, stewardship, education, and community engagement. In addition to Land Conservation and Land Stewardship, these core activities include Bird Conservation, Community Farm, Watershed Protection, and Outreach and Education. This holistic approach to conservation explores the connections among land, birds, habitat, agriculture, and water, and educates the public on these connections.

Our land protection and stewardship efforts have been focused on the Willistown area; however, our work has a regional and national impact on conservation.

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Over the next three years, as our land protection efforts thrive and new opportunities in our traditional program area diminish, we anticipate a growing emphasis on habitat conservation and restoration, education and community outreach. Within these conserved lands, we will use our growing body of research in bird, water, and agro-ecology to inform best practices and engage with the community to educate and inspire an ethos of conservation and care of our land, waters, and habitat where wildlife thrives. In addition, we will identify and consider land protection and conservation opportunities outside of our traditional program area that fulfill service gaps in surrounding communities and meet vital conservation needs, as we interact and collaborate with new communities and organizations.

We will continue to be a robust organization that is well established, broadly supported, and attracts leaders at the forefront of the conservation field. Our science-based programs will contribute research to inform conservation priorities and best practices on a regional, national and international scale. We will attract a diverse group of staff, Trustees, and volunteers who are deeply committed to the mission of WCT and bring a variety of perspectives, skills, and experiences to our work. We will offer robust community and educational programs that attract a wide swath of participants. We will use our established expertise and connections for the conservation benefit of communities outside our traditional area of focus.

To read our Strategic Plan in full, click the cover below:

My Conservation Journey: A Tale of Two Countries

December 1, 2022 By Bird Conservation Team

By WCT Bird Conservation Associate Phillys N. Gichuru
Cover Photo by Jennifer Mathes

My first memorable conservation experience was when, as an undergrad, my population genetics professor walked into the classroom and very nonchalantly said he was going to miss one of our classes, because he was going to participate in the translocation of elephants from the larger Narok area into Maasai Mara National Park in Kenya. Of course, all five of us in the classroom asked if we could go along too. That experience is how I was sold on conservation as a viable career option for me. It was the thrill, the tender care for each animal, and the passion for the job that drew me in. This was true for every job experience I took on after that.

I went on to work with Ol Pejeta Conservancy as a field technician affiliated with my university at the time, collecting black rhino (Diceros bicornis) dung samples for non-invasive genetic analysis to study population genetics. Technically, the fresher the dung, the better the chances of getting DNA from it. What was most endearing about this experience is because black rhinos are critically endangered, at the time, every rhino in this population was monitored very closely to reduce poaching incidences. Over time, each warden knew every little detail about the rhinos, and they called you when the dung was fresh with a bonus story of how they had just gotten chased by a rhino and had the torn trousers to prove it.

While conservation in Kenya and the US is very similar in a lot of aspects — including my observations they both rely heavily on donors/fundraising, habitat loss is a never-ending concern, and passion drives most people in this field — it is also very different. Most of Kenya’s wildlife can be found in protected areas, Kenya does not employ hunting as a model of conservation, and most obviously, we have a lot more charismatic megafauna that tend to get a lot of attention. In parallel, Kenya heavily relies on tourism to fund conservation. Protected areas in Kenya are either federally owned (National Parks) or privately owned (mostly conservancies). While there are private conservancies, the federal government has a huge stake in management of endangered/critically endangered species such as the elephants, black rhinos, Hirolas, Sable, and Roan antelopes, wild dogs, Grevy (zebras).

Oh! If it wasn’t obvious, we took part in that elephant translocation. The adults get darted and tranquilized from a helicopter and you swoop in very fast with a 4-wheel car right before they go down. To tranquilize the calves, if present, we load them on a huge truck and move them to the park. It takes phenomenal precision.

Now at WCT, I am far from the savanna and I work to conserve animals that are significantly smaller than the elephants and rhinos. I’ve found that the precision required in the elephant translocation process lends itself to the precise skills used to gently remove birds from our mist nets before wrapping tiny bands around their slim legs in the bird banding process. Conservation comes in all shapes and sizes.

To learn more about the science of endangered feces, click here.

— By WCT Bird Conservation Associate Phillys N. Gichuru

Rushton Farm’s First Purple Martins

July 28, 2022 By Aaron Coolman

Purple Martins at the Rushton Farm hotel this spring. Photo by Aaron Coolman

Eight years ago, our Bird Conservation Program Chair and Trustee, Dick Eales, helped to fund and erect a small hotel placed upon the top of a fifteen foot pole. The hotel, fitted with twelve small rooms evenly split between an upper and lower level, has small entrance doors painted white with seafoam green walls separating them and a matching patio and railing for its occupants to rest. For years, the hotel has remained largely vacant; at least for the intended residents.

It was built for the purpose of hosting Purple Martin (Progne subis) nesting colonies. Like many other bird species who historically used hollow tree cavities as nesting locations, Purple Martins have lost a substantial majority of their available natural nesting sites. This has led to a decline in their breeding populations across the United States, where the birds now almost entirely rely upon human-built structures like the hotel mentioned before.

Purple Martins atop the Rushton hotel in May. Photo by Aaron Coolman

As we approached the end of our spring migration banding season in mid-May, we started to notice birds were occupying the small hotel. Purple Martins are North America’s largest member of the Swallow family, so when we saw the large silhouette soaring around the hotel and perched on its patio we were elated to raise our binoculars and see three beautiful martins! This is the first time since installing the martin hotel that Purple Martins have decided to use the structure to start a breeding colony. And the best part is, so long as the first year of the breeding attempt is successful, the birds will come back to the same structures year after year. Thus far, I have counted six birds using the hotel.

Their songs are lovely murmurations of chortles and bubbles that almost sound like muffled underwater laughter. The adult males have a full plumage of deep, midnight purple that commands your attention on the brightest of summer days, and the sub-adult males and females have whitish bellies and varying amounts of purple on their throats and heads while sporting dark wings and tails.

Rushton Purple Martins. Photo by Aaron Coolman

Purple Martins are long distance migrants, traveling to South America for winter every year. Because they feed exclusively on flying insects, they head south to find warmer temperatures where there is higher invertebrate activity during the northern hemispheric winter. One of our last neotropical migrants to arrive in the spring, the adults will start to show up to their established breeding colonies in southern Pennsylvania throughout April. Then in May, the sub-adults begin to find their new homes. Because our martin colony was newly established this year, we only have one adult male and female, the others being sub-adults. With any luck and a bit of trust in our understanding of these iconic birds’ behavior, they will return to Rushton year after year to raise their young.

On June 28th, our eager Rushton Nature Keepers were able to watch Blake Goll, Education Programs Manager, band the 10-day old chicks. Upon lowering the hotel and carefully checking each nest cavity, she found one successful nest with four beautiful chicks. The bands will be distinct through binoculars, so we will be able to identify the banded birds when they return next year.

Rushton Nature Keeper holding a Purple Martin chick. Photo by Blake Goll

The martin hotel overlooks Henry’s Garden and the lower farm fields, just south of the small red barn. If you have not had the opportunity to come experience the martin’s warm greetings and aerial acrobatics as they forage in the air, then come to Rushton Farm and enjoy their presence before they leave again in the fall to continue the annual migration cycle to the southern hemisphere.

Rushton Woods Banding Station Annual Songbird Banding Report 2021

April 7, 2022 By Bird Conservation Team

By Alison Fetterman, Bird Conservation Associate & Northeast Motus Project Manager and Blake Goll, Education Programs Manager

In April 2021, the WCT bird banding crew members emerged from their winter hibernation and gathered at Rushton Woods Banding Station (RWBS) to begin their 11th year of Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) and their 12th year of spring and fall migration. It was clear that the birds had continued living their celestial lives, lives that were intricately synchronized with the steady rhythms of nature millions of years before we showed up.

THE PEOPLE | Bird banding occurs under the supervision of four WCT staff who are federally licensed by the Bird Banding Laboratory. We regularly train volunteers who are essential to the successful operation of the banding station. In 2021, we were grateful for all our volunteers, but especially our regular helpers: Katie Hogue, Kelly Johnson, Molly Love, Kaitlin Muchio, Edwin Shafer, Jess Shahan, Victoria Sindlinger, Kirsten Snyder, and Claudia Winter. We were also lucky to host a guest bander this year: Holly Garrod. Holly joined as a migratory bander, stopping over for the fall to lend us her expert banding skills before her reverse migration to study birds in the tropics on their breeding grounds.

Other guests to RWBS included staff from the Pennsylvania Game Commission and BirdsCaribbean, with whom we continue to collaborate for a greater conservation impact. We also welcomed U.S. Representative Chrissy Houlahan for a visit in April.

THE MARVELS OF MIGRATION | A small songbird weighing just a little more than a quarter may spend 30% of its year in migration, traveling to and from the exact breeding and wintering locations as the year before. Each spring, an estimated three billion North American migratory birds traverse distances of over 2,000 miles from the tropical wintering grounds of South America to the critical boreal forest “nursery” of Canada — most of them putting in the mileage by night, navigating by starlight and Earth’s magnetic field. This anomalous strategy allows foraging by day along the way, which is vital especially for smaller birds that can only carry so much fuel in the form of fat reserves.

In fact, for most songbirds, 70% of migration is spent feeding and resting in “stopover habitat,” or pit stops, rather than in sustained directional flight. Consequently, understanding how birds use stopover habitat during migration has become just as important to ornithologists as identifying breeding or wintering habitat. This is just one of the reasons why we began banding at Rushton Woods Preserve and Farm 12 years ago. Never was the stopover value of our nature preserve better elucidated than on the morning of May 4, 2021, or as we call it: “The Spring Fallout.”

Brewster’s Warbler. Photo by Blake Goll/Staff.

THE SPRING FALLOUT | Bleary-eyed banders arrived to the hedgerows in the blue civil twilight before dawn, expecting a good catch based on the southerly winds from the previous night. As the nets were opened, the vegetation around us came alive with the whispered din of hundreds of excited bird voices chirping about their recent arrival. The low chattering exploded into full song at daybreak, and it was as if we had just entered an aviary with the roar of hundreds of birds representing dozens of different species reverberating through the shrubs and vines. “It’s birdy as heck out here today,” Blake noted, now wide-eyed, as we convened at the banding table to anticipate the first net check.

Favorable migration conditions the previous night (Fig. 2), combined with pre-dawn storms and heavy fog presented fallout conditions, a phenomenon where birds cannot continue to their destination because of the energy required to fly through severe weather. This resulted in many travelers honing in on the closest suitable stopover sanctuary. The “good catch” we expected became our best catch ever; our skilled team of bird banders, volunteers, and visitors from the PA Game Commission safely processed and released 180 indviduals — three times our normal catch (Fig. 3).

The avian cast included our first Brewster’s Warbler (defined as a hybrid of the Blue-winged Warbler and the near threatened Golden-winged Warbler) along with a dazzling 25 other species including: Magnolia Warbler, American Redstart, Ovenbird, Blue-winged Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Northern Waterthrush, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Black-and-white Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Wood Thrush, Veery, White-eyed Vireo, Eastern Towhee, Gray Catbird, American Goldfinch, Swamp Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow,and White-crowned Sparrow!

Figure 3. A total number of birds captured per day at RWBS during spring migration 2021.

Veery (Catharus fuscescens).
Photo by Blake Goll/Staff.

A SUMMER BREEDING RECORD | After the exhilaration of tracking spring migration in the hedgerows and thickets adjacent to the Rushton Farm, the banders moved to the interior woodlands of Rushton Woods Preserve to monitor our breeding birds for the Institute for Bird Populations’ nation-wide study called MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship). For eight weeks in the summer, we sizzled beneath the cathedral-like canopy of the royal beeches and tulip poplars and used our mist nets to capture a snapshot of the nesting activity of Rushton Woods. Banding fresh, fuzzy babies just out of their nests is usually reward enough, but last summer we also had the humbling thrill of catching up with a “veery” old friend.

“It’s he!” Alison exclaimed into the data book after Blake routinely read off the nine-digit band number of a recaptured Veery. It was the same Veery we had caught the year before and several years before that; he was first banded in 2011 — our inaugural MAPS year — when we proclaimed him to be at least two years old based on our feather and molt analysis. That makes him at least 12 years old as of summer of 2021 and our oldest banded bird for the station! To put that age in perspective, according to the Bird Banding Lab, the oldest recorded Veery is 13.

The Veery is a long-distance migrating, neotropical thrush, overwintering in central and southern Brazil and capable of flying 160 miles in one night. How awe-inspiring that our old Veery accomplished this feat a dozen times, triumphantly returning each summer to fill the emerald understory of Rushton with his ethereal song. This longevity record is a testament to the importance of preserving land for wild creatures. When you consider what these migratory birds must face on their journeys — habitat loss and destruction by humans, city lights and buildings, climate change, weather, pesticides, open oil pits, natural predators, and cats — it is miraculous that a bird can persist on such a knife’s edge.

AUTUMN’S BOUNTY | Fall brought Rushton banders back out to the migration station in the relatively open hedgerows where young birds hatched in the dark woods to find a more forgiving landscape for learning how to survive, and where migrants discovered an abundance of insect and berry forage to fuel their southbound journeys. Fall of 2021 turned out to be our second best with 1,372 new birds banded in addition to 174 recaptures of a total diversity of 61 species; for comparison, fall of 2019 brought 1,427 new birds. Gray Catbirds — familiar and endearing garden birds related to mockingbirds — had a record year, comprising 42% of our total new birds! The majority of these were fresh youngsters hatched that summer; this annual recruitment of new birds into the population is the reason why we see a species-wide increase in abundance during the fall season relative to spring; for comparison, spring 2021 totaled 493 new birds (Fig. 4.).

Figure 4. Total New Birds Captures Per Season 2010-2021 at RWBS.

September also produced our 102nd species for the station, a Cooper’s Hawk, that was ceremoniously banded by expert raptor bander and renowned naturalist and author, Scott Weidensaul. Scott happened to be visiting for a talk he was to give that evening about the Willistown Conservation Trust’s role in Motus Wildlife Tracking and his most recent book: “A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds.” After the raptorial hawk was gently banded and processed, it was temporarily excused from the net premises for the safety of the rest of our songbirds.

Scott Weidensaul with a female Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii). Photo by Jennifer Mathes.

Though 75% of the songbirds we catch are only caught once, there is immense value in the few birds we see more than once. For example, we caught a young Worm-eating Warbler on September 8 and again on September 30. This bird likely hatched late summer on a nearby wooded hillside, then dispersed to the Rushton shrublands, illustrating the importance of shrub habitat — including those typically associated with forests — for young birds learning how to make a living before their first migration. We also caught other songbirds stopping over, like the hatch-year female American Redstart who gained 27% of her body weight in just 10 days; that’s the equivalent of a 145 pound human gaining almost 40 pounds in a little over a week! Birds gain weight in this rapid manner only to prepare for long overnight flights. Studying the rate of weight gain through recaptures such as these can help shed light on the quality of stopover habitat in terms of supplying adequate forage for migrants.

Finally, one of the last days of the season produced our fourth ever American Woodcock! These marvelously camouflaged earthworm-eaters prefer early successional woodlots next to open fields — like those found at Rushton — where the males can perform their esoteric sky dances, electrifying the dusk and moonlit skies of spring with their wing twittering and chirping spiral descents.

A female American Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla).
Photo by Blake Goll/Staff.

BIRD BANDING AND LAND CONSERVATION | When all is said and done, we banded nearly 2,000 birds in 2021, between spring migration, summer MAPS, and fall migration. It was a wild year that included fallouts, two new species for the station, discovering a bird that was with us since our very first year, hosting hundreds of visitors including special guests, and training many students and colleagues. Through banding we continue to learn information about species abundance and diversity, individual longevity and site fidelity, and how birds are using our conserved land throughout their annual cycle.

Our banding station’s high catch rates — or “birdiness” — combined with the unique setting on a regenerative farm within a greater nature preserve shows the world that people and wildlife can coexist in harmony. On a broader scale, as Rushton Woods becomes inreasingly surrounded by human development, our continuous banding efforts may be illuminating the Preserve as a critical island habitat for birds traveling through, wintering, or breeding in the region.

With more than 17,000 birds banded over the last 12 years, it can be useful to look more broadly at species groups and their changes over time. Birds of species groups have many similarities, including diet and foraging habits. For example, we typically capture over 200 warblers of different species each year. Since most warblers are tree top dwelling, insect gleaners, if we group them together, we may gain a better understanding of habitat priority needs at Rushton. Our captures are overwhelmingly dominated by Catbirds, Sparrows, Warblers, and Thrushes (Fig. 5). And when we look at the capture rates over time, we can see that all are increasing except for Sparrows (Fig 6).

Figure 5. Percent of birds captured by taxonomic group at RWBS 2010-2021.

Figure 6. Capture Rates (Birds per 100 net hours) for the four most abundantly captured birds by taxonomic group at RWBS 2010-2021.

The gravity of the state of birds today runs the risk of being lost on the reader through an auspicious annual banding report such as this. It must be noted that in less than one human lifetime, North American bird populations have plummeted by 30% with no ecosystem spared; that’s three billion, or one in four birds gone since 1970, largely due to human actions. So while we recover from our world being briefly disrupted by the uncertainty of a pandemic, we must learn to minimize our disruption of the natural systems to which we are inextricably linked.

You can find the full Rushton Woods Banding Station Annual Songbird Banding Report, as well as a full list of all species we’ve banded each year since 2010, on our website.

One thing’s for certain: the wild birds at Rushton will always be welcome, where the rhythm of winged creatures reigns.

RESOURCES

Institute for Bird Populations
N ortheast Motus Collaboration
Rushton Woods Banding Station Annual Songbird Banding Report
Species Seen List

The Rhythm of Winged Creatures

February 9, 2022 By Blake Goll

Rushton Farm Bird Banding Station | Annual Year in Review 2021

*Eastern Bluebird banded at Rushton Farm in May 2021.* *Photo by Blake Goll*

The vertiginous year of 2021 began with early spring vaccinations spurring the human world to return to its usual frenetic pace in the “aftermath” of the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses, gatherings, travel, and development resumed with vigor—and the relative quiescent lull the earth had experienced in 2020 was no more. Did the natural world benefit in some small way by briefly quieting its human inhabitants? Maybe we’ll never be able to quantify it, but when the bird banders got back together at Rushton Woods Preserve last spring, it was clear (and comforting) that the birds kept on living their celestial lives: lives that were intricately synchronized with the steady rhythms of nature millions of years before we showed up.

A small songbird weighing just a little more than a quarter may spend 30% of its year in migration, traveling to and from the exact breeding and wintering locations as the year before. Scientists are still trying to understand all the mysterious physiological mechanisms that allow these tiny athletes to make such intense journeys. Each spring an estimated three billion North American migratory birds traverse distances of over 2,000 miles from the tropical wintering grounds of South America to the critical boreal forest “nursery” of Canada—most of them putting in the mileage by night, navigating by starlight and Earth’s magnetic field. This anomalous strategy allows foraging by day along the way, which is vital especially for smaller birds that can only carry so much fuel in the form of fat reserves.

*The Canada Warbler, banded at Rushton in May 2021, is an example of a bird that may overwinter in South America and nest in Canada. Photo by Blake Goll*

In fact for most birds, 70% of migration is spent feeding and resting in “stopover habitat”, or pit stops, rather than in sustained directional flight. Consequently, understanding how birds use stopover habitat during migration has become just as important to ornithologists as identifying breeding or wintering habitat. This is just one of the reasons why we began banding at Rushton Woods Preserve and Farm twelve years ago. Never was the stopover value of our nature preserve better elucidated than on the morning of May 4th, 2021.

The Spring Fallout

Bleary-eyed banders arrived to the hedgerows in the blue civil twilight before dawn, expecting a good catch based on the southerly winds the previous night. As the nets were opened, the vegetation around us came alive with the whispered din of hundreds of excited bird voices chirping of their recent arrival. The low chattering exploded into full song at daybreak, and it was as if we had just entered an aviary with the roar of hundreds of birds of dozens of different species reverberating through the shrubs and vines. “It’s birdy as heck out here today,” I noted, now wide-eyed, as we convened at the banding table to anticipate the first net check.

*Shelly Eshleman setting a mist net. Photo by Jennifer Mathes*

Favorable migration conditions the previous night combined with pre-dawn storms presented fallout conditions (whereby birds cannot continue to their destination because of the energy required to fly through severe weather) with many travelers honing in on the closest suitable stopover sanctuary. The “good catch” we expected became our best catch ever with 180 individuals being safely processed and released by our skilled team of 4 licensed banders and 7 volunteers, plus a few friends from the PA Game Commission who happened to be visiting that day.

The avian cast included our first Brewster’s Warbler (defined as a hybrid of the Blue-winged Warbler and the near threatened Golden-winged Warbler) along with a dazzling 24 other species: Magnolia Warbler, American Redstart, Ovenbird, Blue-winged Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Northern Waterthrush, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Black-and-white Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Wood Thrush, Veery, White-eyed Vireo, Eastern Towhee, Gray Catbird, American Goldfinch, Swamp Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, and White-crowned Sparrow!

In order from top left: White-eyed Vireo (Photo by Kirsten Snyder), Wood Thrush (Photo by Kirsten Snyder), White-crowned Sparrow (Photo by Blake Goll), Yellow-rumped Warbler (Photo by Blake Goll), American Redstart (Photo by Ryan Green), Indigo Bunting (Photo by Blake Goll), and Brewster’s Warbler (Photo by Blake Goll) all banded May 4th, 2021.

*Two other spring beauties banded last May: Northern Parula and Baltimore Oriole. Photos by Blake Goll*.

A Summer Breeding Record

After the exhilaration of tracking spring migration in the hedgerows and thickets adjacent to the farm, the banders move to the interior woodlands of the preserve to monitor our breeding birds for the Institute for Bird Populations‘ constant-effort, nation-wide study called MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship). We sizzle beneath the cathedral-like canopy of the royal beeches and tulip poplars once every 10 days for 8 weeks in summer, using our mist nets to capture a snapshot of the nesting activity of Rushton Woods. Banding fresh, fuzzy babies just out of their nests is usually reward enough, but last summer we also had the humbling thrill of catching up with a “veery” old friend.

“It’s him!”, Alison exclaimed into the data book after I routinely read off the 9-digit band number of a recaptured Veery in hand. It was the same Veery we caught the year before and several years before that; it was the same Veery we first banded in 2011 (our inaugural MAPS year) when we proclaimed him to be at least 2 years old based on our feather and molt analysis. That makes him at least 12 years old as of summer of 2021 and our oldest banded bird for the station! (The oldest recorded Veery according to the Bird Banding Lab is 13.)

*Veery recaptured at Rushton Woods in summer 2021. Photo by Blake Goll*

The Veery is a long-distance migrating, neotropical thrush—overwintering in central and southern Brazil—capable of flying 160 miles in one night. How awe-inspiring that our old Veery accomplished this feat a dozen times, triumphantly returning each summer to fill the emerald understory of Rushton with his ethereal song. An incredible longevity record such as this is a testament to the importance of preserving land for wild creatures. When you consider what these migratory birds must face on their journeys— habitat loss and destruction by humans, city lights and buildings, climate change, weather, pesticides, open oil pits, natural predators, and cats—it is miraculous that a bird can persist on such a knife’s edge.

Autumn’s Bounty

Fall brings Rushton banders back out to the migration station in the relatively open hedgerows; where young birds hatched in the dark woods find a more forgiving landscape for learning how to survive; and where migrants find an abundance of insect and berry forage to fuel their southbound journeys. Fall of 2021 turned out to be our second best with 1,372 new birds banded in addition to 174 recaptures of a total diversity of 61 species (fall of 2019 brought 1,427 new birds). Gray Catbirds—familiar and endearing garden birds related to mockingbirds— had a record year, comprising 42% of our total new birds! The majority of these were fresh youngsters hatched that summer; this annual recruitment of new birds into the population is the reason why we see a species-wide increase in abundance during the fall season relative to spring. (For comparison, Spring 2021 totaled 493 new birds.)

*Gray Catbird banded at Rushton in fall 2021. Photo by Blake Goll*

The fall banding season is also much longer than spring, with birds taking a more leisurely voyage in the absence of the pressure of mating. Last September brought beauties like the chartreuse Chestnut-sided Warbler, the dashing Black-throated Green Warbler, and the hard-for-every-birder-to-find Connecticut Warbler. (Our nets always manage to wrest a few skulking Connecticuts out of the dense scrub where they would otherwise go undetected.)

A young Yellow-billed Cuckoo, likely hatched that summer at Rushton, took center stage on September 14th. Having evolved one of the shortest nesting cycles of any bird—developing from hatching to fledging in a mind-blowingly short seven days (and snapping at flies from the nest at around Day 2)—allows for this species to capitalize on irruptively available food sources like noxious hairy caterpillars that other birds don’t dare to mess with.

September 3oth produced our 102nd species for the station, a Cooper’s Hawk, that was ceremoniously banded by expert raptor bander and renowned naturalist and author, Scott Weidensaul. Scott happened to be visiting for a talk he was to give that evening about the Willistown Conservation Trust’s role in Motus Wildlife Tracking and his most recent book A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds. After the raptorial hawk was gently banded and processed, it was temporarily excused from the net premises for the safety of the rest of our songbirds.

*In order from top left:* *Chestnut-sided Warbler, Black-throated Green Warbler, Connecticut Warbler, Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Photos by Blake Goll) and Scott Weidensaul with the Cooper’s Hawk (Photo by Jennifer Mathes).*

Also on that illustrious day of September 30th, we recaptured a young Worm-eating Warbler—originally banded by us on September 8th—that likely hatched that summer on a nearby wooded hillside. With a steady high fat score and consistent weight between catches, we assumed this brand new forest bird had dispersed from its natal grounds and was simply matriculating as a student in the bounty that Rushton’s shrublands have to offer. Recaptures like this illustrate the importance of shrub habitat for young birds (including those typically associated with forests) learning how to make a living before their first migration.

Other same-season recaptures illustrate the usage of the preserve as stopover habitat rather than “a school.” For example, last September we captured many American Redstarts—diminutive forest warblers that must refuel frequently during migratory journeys. One hatch year female that was caught multiple times gained 27% of her body weight in just 10 days; that’s the equivalent of a 145 pound human gaining almost 40 pounds in a little over a week! Birds gain weight in this rapid manner only to prepare for long overnight flights. Studying the rate of weight gain through recaptures such as these can help shed light on the quality of stopover habitat in terms of supplying adequate forage for migrants. (Lucky for us, a graduate student from University of Pennsylvania is analyzing our data for this as we speak.)

*Above:* *Worm-eating Warbler. Photo by Celeste Sheehan.*

*Female American Redstart. Photo by Blake Goll*

October brought muted treasures like the Brown Creeper—its bark colored plumage exquisitely flecked with the same snow white of the late blooming snakeroot; the Blackpoll Warbler with its racing tiger stripes and extraordinarily long wings that would carry it 1,800 miles nonstop over the Atlantic Ocean; and the Blue-headed Vireo with its distinguished alabaster spectacles and blue-gray hood for haunting evergreen hemlock forests.

Finally, one of the last days of the season produced our fourth ever American Woodcock! These marvelously camouflaged earthworm-eaters prefer early successional woodlots next to open fields (like those found at Rushton) where the males can perform their esoteric sky dances, electrifying the dusk and moonlit skies of spring with their wing twittering and chirping spiral descents.

*Brown Creeper banded in October. Photo by Blake Goll.*

*Blackpoll Warbler and Blue-headed Vireo banded in October. Photos by Blake Goll.*

Our 4th ever American Woodcock banded in October. Photo by Blake Goll.

Bird Banding and Land Conservation

When all said and done, we banded nearly 2,000 birds in 2021 (between spring migration, summer MAPS, and fall migration). It was a wild year with fallouts, two new species for the station, discovering a bird that was with us since our very first year, hosting and educating hundreds of visitors including special guests, and training many students and colleagues. Through banding we continue to learn information about species abundance and diversity, individual longevity and site fidelity, and how birds are using our conserved land throughout their annual cycle.

Volunteer Victoria Sindlinger and WCT’s Director of Bird Conservation Program Lisa Kiziuk educating young guests. *Photos by Blake Goll*.

*Banding team staff. Photo by Jennifer Mathes*

*Child releasing a Magnolia Warbler. Photos by Blake Goll*

Our banding station’s high catch rates (or “birdiness”) combined with the unique setting on a regenerative farm within a greater nature preserve shows the world that people and wildlife can coexist in harmony. On a broader scale as Rushton Woods becomes surrounded by increasing human development, our continuous banding efforts may be illuminating the preserve as a critical island habitat for birds traveling through, wintering, or breeding in the region.

The gravity of the state of birds today runs the risk of being lost on the reader through an auspicious annual banding report such as this. It must be noted that in less than one human lifetime, North American bird populations have plummeted by 30% with no ecosystem spared; that’s 3 billion, or one in four birds gone since 1970, largely due to human actions. So while we recover from our world being briefly disrupted by the uncertainty of a pandemic, we must learn to minimize our disruption of the natural systems to which we are inextricably linked. (Visit #BringBirdsBack)

One thing’s for certain: wild will always be welcome at Rushton, where the rhythm of winged creatures reigns.