Speaking as someone who spent years locating redwing nests, I think this is a mountain not a molehill. Locating nests in grassland is HARD on purpose. Birds make it that way. Feeding females do t go down to their nests. They drop and walk to the nest. One makes paths tromping through the grass which neither farmer nor birds will benefit from.
I was thinking about what long term obs and relatively few nesting areas it took for the one farm as described. No not impossible but much harder than it seems. And leaving clumps with nests as well as paths near them will increase predation. I am dubious as good as this sounds. Anne Sent from my iPhone > On Jun 20, 2021, at 10:40 PM, Geo Kloppel <[email protected]> wrote: > > I’ve been musing along a different line, wondering if a preemptive approach > is possible. > > It takes time to mow the big fields that grassland nesters favor, and the hay > farmer can’t mow all of them simultaneously. The work of haying season has to > begin somewhere, and start early enough that the farmer can get through it > all. So each year some field will be selected to go first, and another > second, and the rest must wait their turns. > > Clearly some fields that are later in the queue can produce a crop of > fledglings before it’s their turn to be mowed; otherwise we wouldn’t be > having this conversation. So, suppose for the moment that the decision about > which fields to mow early could be made before nesting had even begun. If > there was then some way to discourage the birds from selecting those > particular fields to nest in, the effect would be to direct them to the > fields slated for later mowing... > > -Geo > -- > > Cayugabirds-L List Info: > http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME > http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES > http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm > > ARCHIVES: > 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html > 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds > 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html > > Please submit your observations to eBird: > http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ > > -- > -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
