The Blundering Biologist

Steve Sanford

Steve Sanford

Well-known member
All~


When the frost leaves the ground and the mud dries out, there are always certain seasonal chores to do around the farm. I have several acres here and there that I mow (bush hog) once each year because I had left them "rough" as food and cover for wintering birds. Most are near the house but others are further afield. I bush hog them now so that I am less likely to disturb nesting birds than later in the Spring. Nevertheless, there is always a risk.


Another project was clearing out some brush - mostly Staghorn Sumac and Tartarian Honeysuckle in a little corner where we had planted a "memory tree" - a White Pine - for Susan's sister 10 or more years ago. I wanted to showcase the tree and be able to enjoy the little rise and outcropping that is one of the approaches to the Farm on the road. So, I spent a couple of mornings with the tractor and a chain to pull out scores of saplings and shrubs. I probably cleared an eighth-acre - and so I bought some Dutch White Clover seeds this morning to spread on the bare soil.


This (mostly to the left - west - outside of the photo) had been an impenetrable tangle of live and dead Sumac, Honeysuckle and Multiflora Rose. Excellent cover for any ground nester....



View attachment sm Woodcock Nesting site B - 10 April 2019.JPG



This afternoon, I ran up there with the tractor to drag out the last pile of saplings. I had already chained up the pile when I spied another 3-inch Maple sapling I had missed. As I stepped over to grab it, a fluttering erupted right between my feet.


View attachment sm Woodcock Nest 5 - 10 April 2019.JPG



A hen Woodcock flew just a foot or two then walked slowly uphill from her nest. I had been walking and driving my tractor through this very location numerous times of late, especially yesterday. I am so glad I did not destroy the nest - but I have certainly reduced its chances of success.


Woodcock have been peenting right behind the house for the past 2 weeks - struggling to be heard over the Peepers and Wood Frogs over the last several days. Over the years, I have found a couple of Woodcock broods but this was my first nest with eggs.


BTW: All the saplings and brush I removed have been piled strategically - to serve as nesting and foraging cover for future wildlife.....



Other Spring events: I saw my first Meadowlarks today - and a female Northern Harrier. There were still Redpolls on the feeder yesterday, but we had Fox Sparrows and a Pine Warbler last week. Bluebirds and Tree Swallows are building nests in our boxes. Sunday morning I saw Bluewings and Ringnecks on a local beaver pond. While I was working yesterday, I watched a hen Wood Duck exit a tall, dying Sugar Maple.



'Tis a fine time of year!


SJS

 
Our awakening started about a month ago. Always renews the spirit after the dregs of winter. Days now bumping 70 fairly regularly so time to get everything possible done before we settle into an Eastern Shore humid summer. It sure does the spirit well right now to be working outside and watching spring bloom.
 
Last edited:
We received 5? of new snow here in Minnesnowta[;)]
I keep thinking spring but Mother Nature must not be able to read minds.
 
That's pretty cool Steve. Good luck to momma and the babies.

We actually do get some nesting woodcock down here in FL and I have a strip of woods that I would like to figure out how to make it desirable for woodcock to visit and nest in. A neighbor down the road had a woodcock in the spring that I flushed. I didn't see babies but I couldn't get close enough to where I saw the woodcock. So maybe it was nesting, maybe just passing through. But they are in my general area from time to time.
 

Give a man a gas powered machine/device, and in the name of "improvement" can screw up as much as possible.

We cannot improve upon nature, no matter how wise and educated we may be.

The uglier the tangle the better it is. If ya try to go in, and come out bleeding, it's just right.

Predators have more than enough Parks to glean from.


We are each in our own way Blunder's. I have done my share.

I tip my hat to your saying so. That takes guts.

I hope your hen Woodcock and brood survive.


Best regards
Vince
 

A very good friend of mine has prime Woodcock habitat on his old farm. Very scarce these days.

Took many years, but now almost all of the farm is in the Conservation Easement Program.


He owns it, but he cannot touch it EVER. Nor can any other owner. Thank GOD.

It is some of the most Gawd Awful Ugly Cover I have ever hunted for pheasants in the East.


The Woodcock love it, and that is all that is important. It is their good place, and are never hunted.

Tis a grand thing to look upon, but not improve.

Once and awhile we do things for the better.[smile]


Best regards
Vince
 
Rich~


No trail cam there. My plan now is to give the nest a wide berth. Probably best thing would be if she abandoned now (yesterday) and laid a new clutch in cover that's safe from me and my tractor.


All the best,


SJS

 
Vince~


I thoroughly enjoy messing around with the landscape - sort of like messing about in boats! I view the Farm as a canvas.



View attachment Pencil Brook Farm Map - colorized with TITLE sm.jpg



Instead of brushes and paints, I use: ag leases, plantings (grasses and herbs on up to trees), lawn tractor, bush hog, chainsaw - and we even diked 2 wet spots to create shallow wetlands. No question, though, that letting Nature take her course is another powerful tool. Any big "improvements" we have made have simply gotten better and better as the sites age.


We bought this land with wildlife (and older architecture) in mind. As far as we can tell, the fields are the same as on the 1865 ag census maps - an old-style farm with small fields and hedgerows everywhere; there are 22 "management units" on 67 acres. Susan and I take some time to recognize our good fortune each day.


All the best,


SJS

 
Good morning Zane and Vinc e - and Rich~


Looks like I've somehow stolen Zane's identity on my last 2 posts.....


Guess I'm an inadvertent internet hacker now - yet another blunder????


All the best,


SJS



 
I noticed that, I thought you had an alter ego (not the first time someone has done that here, but it usually is on purpose).
 
Vince Pagliaroli said:
A very good friend of mine has prime Woodcock habitat on his old farm. Very scarce these days.

Took many years, but now almost all of the farm is in the Conservation Easement Program.


He owns it, but he cannot touch it EVER. Nor can any other owner. Thank GOD.

It is some of the most Gawd Awful Ugly Cover I have ever hunted for pheasants in the East.


The Woodcock love it, and that is all that is important. It is their good place, and are never hunted.

Tis a grand thing to look upon, but not improve.

Once and awhile we do things for the better.[smile]


Best regards
Vince
Click to expand...


If it's woodcock habitat, won't it need management to keep it in early successional forest? Maine still has a lot of good woodcock habitat, in part because we still have lots of active timber management. This is good for some species (woodcock, moose, lynx), at the price of habitat for species that would do better with larger, older wood (deer, marten, brook tout). A major element of management on conservation lands here where woodcock and ruffed grouse habitat if an objective is pretty regular cutting.
 
Looks like I've somehow stolen Zane's identity on my last 2 posts.....
Click to expand...

Funny, I was wondering why I had such an urge this morning to repaint decoys and work on my sneakbox.....now I know[smile]
 


After the land was surveyed and well marked, major work was done with Federal approval. All further work in perpetuity will also be done by them, not by the land owner.
 
I think there are some similar arrangements for woodcock habitat management on lands around the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Maine.
 
Jeff Reardon said:
Vince Pagliaroli said:
A very good friend of mine has prime Woodcock habitat on his old farm. Very scarce these days.

Took many years, but now almost all of the farm is in the Conservation Easement Program.


He owns it, but he cannot touch it EVER. Nor can any other owner. Thank GOD.

It is some of the most Gawd Awful Ugly Cover I have ever hunted for pheasants in the East.


The Woodcock love it, and that is all that is important. It is their good place, and are never hunted.

Tis a grand thing to look upon, but not improve.

Once and awhile we do things for the better.[smile]


Best regards
Vince
Click to expand...


If it's woodcock habitat, won't it need management to keep it in early successional forest? Maine still has a lot of good woodcock habitat, in part because we still have lots of active timber management. This is good for some species (woodcock, moose, lynx), at the price of habitat for species that would do better with larger, older wood (deer, marten, brook tout). A major element of management on conservation lands here where woodcock and ruffed grouse habitat if an objective is pretty regular cutting.
Click to expand...

Deer are not an old growth forest species...a couple of thousand studies exist indicating that their populations do best in the same habitats that ruffed grouse prosper in at northern latitudes; new growth high stem count habitat with a fair amount of lateral obstacles like blowdowns.
 
RL, I didn't mention old growth, but I should have made clear that I was talking about the situation here in Maine, and more specifically, in northern Maine.

There, the primary limiting factor for deer is winter habitat, which is defined here by our Maine DIFW as closed canopy softwood stands where snow pack depth is limited and allows deer movement to forage and escape predators in winter. It's more complicated--these stands need to be large enough, and have travel corridors to areas that support winter forage--but the emphasis is really on maintaining closed canopy stands of spruce/fir; cedar; or hemlock. In commercial forest land, such stands are limited because those trees tend to be desirable for harvest--less than 5% of the landscape across virtually all of northern of Maine. Historically it was more like 10-15% and deer densities were much higher--though still low here by midwest standards. Most deer management in the north country relates to strategies to protect the small amount of such habitat that is left, or to regrow it, which is a long-term project.

More details here: https://www.maine.gov/ifw/docs/DWA_Guidelines_2.4.10.pdf


My guess is that with the large expanses of National and State forests, the northern tier mid-western states have less of an issue with this than we do here where virtually all of the forest in northern Maine is private timberland. I remember being shocked by how much public land there was in Michigan and Wisconsin during my short mid-western residence. My friends who deer hunt the Adirondacks, an area with similar climate, landscape, and forest types to Maine, tell me deer densities there are higher than here in Maine.

I was at the last presentation that Maine's former senior deer biologist gave before he changed jobs to become our moose biologist. He was asked why he was changing jobs, and his response was that given Maine's land use patterns and the changes in forest management, Maine had become a really easy place to grow moose and a really hard to place to grow deer.
 
Steve et al-
Do any of you do much prescribed burning north of the Mason-Dixon? I burn what I can weather permitting but shut it down at the beginning of April. No doubt any nests I consumed could be replaced, but laying a clutch of eggs is no small investment, and I'd prefer not to be the cause of a nest failure.

I ran a baby rabbit out of my "overgrown" vegetable garden while mowing the yard yesterday. I sow it down to wheat and clover every fall and it's 12" tall and lush right now. I'll mow it down here in a couple more weeks but by then my tenants should be big enough to move off and fend for themselves. I have an arrangement with the critters-the garden is theirs to eat and hide in as they please all winter if they'll leave it be through the summer.
 
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