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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.

Nashville Warbler banded at Rushton in October. Photo by Blake Goll

Filed Under: Bird Banding, Bird Conservation Tagged With: Bird banding, Bird Conservation, migration, regenerative farming, songbirds

Plants Want to Live

April 20, 2020 By Fred De Long

(Excerpt from The Wild Carrot, April 3, 2020, a weekly newsletter from staff to Rushton Farm CSA members.)

Molly seeding away in the greenhouse, day after day. Photo by Fred de Long/Staff

Plants want to live. It is a simple statement said to a 17-year-old teen named Freddy de Long when he forgot to turn on the fans in a greenhouse on a warm spring day. The greenhouse manager had walked in to find 40,000 seedlings in various stages of wilt in a 120-degree atmosphere. Freddy was summoned from the field and was apoplectic at the sight. Sure that he had ruined the season he apologized deeply and prepared to pack up his things and head home. That is when Marley, the greenhouse manager, said, “Relax Freddy, plants want to live. Turn on the fans, soak them with water, and don’t ever let it (expletive) happen again”. I watered and it worked, the plants were revived. What looked like the end of a season was the beginning of a great one as the revived plants made for a very productive season.

I have been thinking of that experience as we enter a new season at an uncertain time. Over 30,000 plants are growing in the greenhouse as we plant the first peas in the field. The garlic in the field looks great as the first carrots break through the cool soil. Lettuce, greens, broccoli and cabbage stretch as they prepare their trip from greenhouse to soil next week. It is a time of rebirth and the sight of it all is calming in this stressful period. It revives your spirit and makes you appreciate life around you.

I say all of this because Molly, Noah and I are thinking of our Rushton family as we work to grow food for the upcoming season. Our CSA members and Rushton Farm volunteers are deeply missed and we look forward to the end of May and the start of the season when we once again can gather and share in a glorious season of food, friends, and family. We all want to live as we lived before. It will take some time, but soon we will be sharing the bounty of Rushton Farm as a community. Until then we will be sharing what is going on at Rushton Farm through our weekly edition of The Wild Carrot every Tuesday. I hope that this will help our community share in the farm experience as the farm awakens and a new season is born.

Summer is coming. 

-Fred

First pea sprouts emerging from the soil. Photo by Fred de Long/Staff

Filed Under: agroecology, Farm, Sustainable Agriculture Tagged With: farm, greenhouse, regenerative farming, Rushton Farm, sustainable farming

Resolve to Be a Better Human for Birds (i.e., Earth)

January 10, 2020 By Blake Goll

Gray-cheeked Thrush banded at Rushton in October 2018. Photo by Blake Goll. This is one of our longest distance migrants, breeding in spruce forests of northern Canada and Alaska.

This fall, world scientists (11,000 of them to be exact) made a clear and unequivocal declaration in BioScience Magazine that planet Earth is in a climate emergency. The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy lifestyle, and climate tipping points are arriving faster than anticipated. Major change is needed at all levels of society, and “help planet Earth” might be the most important New Year’s resolution to add to your list.

This sounds like a lofty task that could induce Ostrich Syndrome of sticking our heads hopelessly into the sand. Especially since this warning follows the article in Science declaring that we have lost 30% of our birds in the past 50 years. Do not despair: there are many personal changes we can all make in our daily lives, and by focusing on birds we can make the overall problem seem more manageable and the solution more tangible. When we help birds, we help the world.

Following represents a list of ideas to consider, realizing we cannot be perfect. But we can certainly be better.

Reduce Carbon Emissions

While most of us cannot directly reduce subsidies to fossil fuel corporations as the Alliance of World Scientists suggests, we can reduce our carbon emissions personally. Planning a vacation for 2020? Try exploring a place closer to home rather than one that requires global air travel. Buying a new car? Choose brands with low emissions or electric if you can afford it. Look into changing your home energy supplier to renewable energy.

Common Yellowthroat last April at Rushton. Photo by Celeste Sheehan. It was determined to be at least 9 years old (originally banded by us in 2012)! This species is less common in drier areas and suffers from loss of its natural habitat.

Studies show that climate change is playing a role in bird declines. As the planet warms, bird ranges are shifting north often into less ideal habitats. Some neotropical migrant species in particular have been hit hard because their day length-derived arrival dates are now out of snyc with temperature-derived North American insect pulses.

Check out the official climate emergency warning.

A native wildflower meadow at Willistown Conservation Trust’s headquarters on Providence Road, Newtown Square. Photo by Blake Goll

Plant a Native Wildflower Garden

With lawns covering over 40 million acres of the U.S., it is paramount that we begin to see these lawns as places where conservation can happen. Devoting part of your manicured lawn to a natural meadow habitat with native grasses and flowers can greatly increase diversity of insects and birds, eliminate the need for pesticides, and reduce the need for watering (most native plants once established can mine groundwater). These native wildflower gardens only require mowing once a year in early spring, thus decreasing carbon emissions associated with repetitive mowing.

Carolina Chickadee banded at Rushton last spring. Photo by Celeste Sheehan

Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home, proved that chickadees in a suburban neighborhood of mostly lawn and non-native trees and shrubs actually experienced diminished breeding success. Most of the nutrient-rich caterpillars they need to feed their young are located on native plants; Tallamy’s lab suggests that even an imperfect mix of 70% native plants and 30% non-native is enough to bolster healthy populations of breeding birds in our neighborhoods.

Visit the Native Plant Finder to learn which butterflies and moths are supported by different native plant host species in your area.

White M Hairstreak, a rare butterfly found at the Willistown Conservation Trust’s native wildflower meadow in July. Photo by Celeste Sheehan

Support Healthy Food Systems

Reducing the global consumption of animal products, especially large livestock, can significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions. Enormous expanses of natural ecosystems are used for growing livestock feed. Eating a plant-based diet not only improves human health but it also frees up cropland for growing human plant food as well as for restoring natural habitats for birds, wildlife, and ecosystem services (e.g., carbon sequestration).

You can also support small farms like Rushton Farm that employ regenerative agriculture. More than simply organic, regenerative agriculture is a conservation and rehabilitation approach to farming and food systems. It’s partnering with nature to regenerate soil with smart crop rotation, increase biodiversity with habitat borders, improve watersheds by eliminating chemical inputs, and enhance ecosystem services like pollination by native bees. Basically, it’s the way farming was done prior to agricultural intensification.

American Goldfinch at Rushton Farm in October. Photo by Celeste Sheehan. Goldfinches are one of the many species that benefit from the habitat created by regenerative farming. We banded a record of 119 goldfinches this fall!

Agricultural intensification has been linked to the worrisome 50% decline in American grassland bird populations since 1970. Worldwide, this sect of birds is dramatically declining in part because of farmland habitat degradation but also because of controversial insecticides previously thought to only affect bees.

A recent study on wild White-crowned Sparrows used Motus tracking technology to understand the detrimental appetite-suppressing effects of these neonicotinoids on migratory birds. Read more about the fascinating study: Insecticides Shown to Threaten Survival of Wild Birds.

White-crowned Sparrow banded at Rushton November 2018. Photo by Blake Goll

Buy Shade Grown Coffee

Coffee traditionally grows in harmony with nature in the understory of tropical forests. This means that it is an agricultural product that can actually support a diversity of habitat structure that is perfect for migratory birds that overwinter in the tropics like our beloved Wood Thrush and Baltimore Orioles.

Wood Thrush banded at Rushton in May. Photo by Blake Goll. For every ten Wood Thrushes, six have been lost since 1970.
Baltimore Oriole banded at Rushton last May. Photo by Celeste Sheehan

Unfortunately, much like the rest of modern agriculture, we have found a way to intensify this crop’s production by clear-cutting forests and growing it in the sun. Full-sun coffee farms make up over 76% of the total coffee cultivation area.

You can support family owned coffee farms that are doing it responsibly and preserving forests by looking for the Bird Friendly certification, a science-based certification that is run by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center of the Smithsonian Institution. Bird Friendly requires farmers to plant a diversity of trees, prioritizing native ones that have the highest value (in insects) to birds.

Read more about the intricacies of the relationship between birds, coffee, and global warming: Newfoodeconomy.org.

And then order some Bird Friendly coffee from our friends at Golden Valley Farms Coffee Roasters in West Chester, PA!

Switch to Sustainable Toilet Paper

The boreal forest of Canada has been dramatically affected by America’s love of luxury toilet paper brands that use virgin pulp. The boreal forest covers 60% of Canada, absorbs significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and has been called the Songbird Nursery of North America as 3 billion birds of over 300 species flock there for breeding each year. An area the size of Pennsylvania has already been wiped out of this majestic forest.

Magnolia Warbler banded at Rushton in May. Photo by Blake Goll. Primarily an insect eater, this warbler migrates from the tropics to the boreal forest to breed.
Northern Saw-whet Owl being banded at Rushton last fall. Photo by Celeste Sheehan. This is another species that depends on the boreal forest.

There are many toilet paper brands that now use recycled paper and even bamboo, which is still far more sustainable than pulp from trees (and a little softer than recycled paper for those transitioning from pillow soft virgin paper). Who Gives a Crap and Seventh Generation are popular brands to try out.

Keep Cats Indoors

Hundreds of millions of birds die each year from window collisions, but there is another human-induced threat that is even more sinister: cats. American Bird Conservancy states that cats kill approximately 2.4 billion birds each year in the U.S. alone, making them the number one human-caused threat to birds (next to habitat loss). We need those 2.4 billion birds, now more than ever, to help keep insect populations in check, which keeps forests healthy and mitigates global warming.

Cat-killed House Finch found in September. Photo by Blake Goll

When allowed to roam outside in natural areas, cats are an alien invasive species that wreak havoc on bird populations that are already stressed due to habitat loss and climate change. When kept inside, cats are loving pets that live longer, healthier lives.

Looking for some interesting reading for 2020? Check out Cat Wars, by Pete Marra, which traces the historical ties between humans and cats and tackles this complex global problem.

Field Sparrow being released after banding last April. Photo by Blake Goll

Engage in Political Activism

According to Audubon science, two-thirds of all North American bird species are at risk of extinction without immediate conservation action. Bird conservation legislation can help prevent unnecessary bird mortality. Industry, for example, plays a significant role in bird deaths: annually, tens of millions of birds collide fatally with power lines and communication towers, 500,000 birds mistake open oil waste pits for lakes, and over 1 million birds perish from accidents like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The current administration has weakened important, long-standing legislation like the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which held industry responsible for minimizing bird mortality (e.g., keeping covers over oil waste pits). Fortunately, a bi-partisan bill has just been introduced: the Migratory Bird Protection Act (MBPA). This bill will essentially revoke the free pass to incidental bird killing and create a permitting system for businesses to reduce preventable bird mortality.

Your voice can make a difference. Urge your representatives to co-sponsor this important bill on American Bird Conservancy’s action page.

American Goldfinch banded at Rushton last April. Photo by Blake Goll

Preclude the Canary’s Swan Song

Birds, long revered as the canary in the coal mine, are chiding us to make some big changes this year. We must work together as fellow inhabitants of this incredible planet to preserve its beauty. There are simply too many of us now for anyone to luxuriate in blissful naivete. The scientists have spoken. The canaries have sung.

Let’s be better humans this year, so that we may never hear the swan song of our canary.

There’s a lot going on in the woods,

Blake

Mute Swan. Photo by Blake Goll

Filed Under: Bird Banding, Bird Conservation, Conservation Tagged With: bird decline, climate change, climate emergency, food systems, Native Plants, new years resolution, regenerative farming, sustainability

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