Meadow Nesting Birds

By Iain MacLeod on Friday, June 10, 2005.

listen:

If you have a meadow on your property, you may be interested in knowing how to mow your field while protcting the birds that nest there. The short answer is to wait a while.

Each spring, many concerned people call New Hampshire Audubon to ask: "When can I mow my fields? I don't want to hurt the nesting birds."

Hi, this is Iain MacLeod from New Hampshire Audubon, bringing you Something Wild.

Grassland birds such as the bobolink and the Eastern meadowlark were common in the Northeast at the turn of the 20th century, when pastures and hayfields covered the countryside. With the decline of Northeast agriculture, farmland reverted to forest. Today, development is taking over the remaining farms and other grasslands. As a result, bobolinks and meadowlarks have increasingly less grassland available for breeding.

Additionally, due to advances in mowing machinery and technology, hay can now be cut earlier and more frequently, and even while wet. Unfortunately, early summer mowing arrives right when grassland birds are nesting. Bobolinks need a minimum of five acres to breed, and meadowlarks need at least fifteen to twenty. With those minimums in mind, if you manage a large tract of grasslands, consider when and how often to mow.

Although both species build their nests in hayfields or meadows, the nest of the bobolink is built in a depression in the ground, which may help it to escape cutting blades. Their nests may contain chicks into early July. The meadowlark's nest, however, takes the shape of a nest cup with a loose dome of grasses over it, and is vulnerable to being destroyed by mowing machinery. Their first chicks may stay in the nest into late June, but meadowlarks then raise a second brood, which fledge in late July.

If you want to protect these birds, then delay mowing until August 1. This late date will give them time to re-nest if the first nest is somehow destroyed. Other declining grassland birds, such as the savannah sparrow, along with many other birds, butterflies, and mammals, will also reap the benefits of good grassland habitat management.

Something Wild is a joint production of New Hampshire Audubon, New Hampshire Public Radio, and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.

For Something Wild, I'm Iain MacLeod.