The recent relief from near-constant rains has given many farmers a chance to get out on their fields, and from Montpelier to Middlebury, you can see hay down, curing under that unfamiliar visitor – the sun.
This drying out is good news for at least some Vermont farmers. But for a small blackbird with a yellow crown and a bubbling song known as the bobolink it’s a decidedly mixed blessing.
Bobolinks are a grassland bird – they nest on the ground, hidden in the grasses of open fields. They’re one of a whole suite of grassland birds that depend on open meadows to live and reproduce, including eastern meadowlarks, savannah sparrows, upland sandpipers and others.
And here’s the rub: every one of these birds is declining in number, primarily because farmland is being lost – lost to development and to fields growing up to brush. In recent years, bobolinks have declined by about 40 per cent nationally. Habitat rules in the natural world and when a bird’s habitat goes away, so does the bird.
There are other problems also. Modern agricultural practices are hard on grassland birds. Farmers typically cut their hay two or three times a summer, in order to obtain the hay’s highest nutritional value.
But bobolinks need 65 days in an undisturbed meadow to nest and raise their young. They can’t reproduce in a field that’s mown three times a summer. At some point in that 65-day cycle, the mower will disturb the nest or kill the fledglings.
And so, an innovative project managed by the Rubenstein School of Natural Resources at UVM aims to keep those fields open for bobolinks – by paying farmers to mow later in the year. For every 10 acres kept unmown during bobolink breeding season, a farmer receives $1,600.
Recently. I joined Allan Strong, dean of the Rubenstein School, and head of the Bobolink Project in Vermont, to see how some of the fields in the program are doing. We walked through a soggy field in Whiting and, sure enough, suddenly there were bobolinks flying around and above us. Males sparred in the air, and an occasional female could be seen, settling into the long, unmown grass, probably returning to her nest.
In 200 acres of hayfields across Addison County, mowing has been delayed and bobolinks - along with other grassland birds – are prospering. And here’s the really amazing part: The money paid to farmers didn’t come from a grant or a federal program. Rather, it came from people who love birds. The bobolink program solicited Vermonters directly, and raised $32,000.
For those of us who love birds - and farms - this is doubly good news.
The program is winding down for this year, and the bobolinks – well, they’re getting ready for their long migratory flight back to South America. They’ll come back to Vermont next spring. And I for one hope the bobolink program will be here, waiting to greet them.
