Techniques for Grassland Birding by Sight

Techniques for Grassland Birding by Sight
Hello. Welcome to Expert Village. My name is Wayne Peterson, and I'm the director of the Important Bird Areas Program for the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Today, we're here at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfield, Massachusetts, where we'll be talking about bird identification and some of the equipment and essential tools that are useful to get one started in this incredibly interesting pastime. Grasslands and meadow lands are another major habitat type that one finds in many areas throughout the United States. Here in Massachusetts and New England, grasslands are unfortunately becoming an increasingly scarce habitat as farm land has been abandoned and as many areas are succeeding to forest situations. But, in a pure grassland situation like the one behind me, there are certain distinctive bird species that are quite common place and, in areas where the grasslands are extensive, are to be expected and are widespread. Species like the Eastern Meadowlark, for example, would be a good case in point. Birds like the Savannah Sparrow, for instance, in areas where the grasslands are big enough and extensive enough. And, where the mowing is perfect height for them, Upland Sandpipers, a species that are generally very scarce in many areas in the East, still survive being a species that at one time were widespread in the tall grass prairies of the mid-western United States. One of the things that's very essential to grasslands, of course, is that the height of the grass needs to be appropriate for the species that we're talking about. For some of them, like the Grasshopper Sparrow, they require very short, bunch type grasses. Whereas, in the case of species like Bobolinks, they do very nicely in hay fields that are mowed on a schedule that is compatible with their nesting and not, hopefully, too disruptive. Because of the absence of raised singing perches in grassland areas, some of the grassland bird species typically display and sing on the wing. Probably a particularly good example of this would be the Bobolink. A bird who, where the males actually will get up and sing from the wing over the grassland before they drop back into the tall grass where the females are sitting on eggs or feeding young.