Bringing Back the Birds
Emily Ellis
This blog is done in participation with the Biodiversity Heritage Library's Earth Optimism campaign, aimed at sharing stories that "turn the conservation conversation from doom and gloom to optimism and opportunity." Learn more about the campaign here.
Pause by one of Oak Spring’s sun-lit fields on any given summer morning, and you may hear a distinctive sound: the bubbling, hopeful call of the bobolink floating up from the tall grass.
The unique song of the bobolink, which captivated poets such as Emily Dickinson and Willian Cullen Bryant, wasn’t always a soundtrack of summers at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation. Bobolinks, like other species of grassland birds once commonly sighted flitting through North America’s hayfields and wild meadows, have declined by around 65% over the past several decades, largely due to habitat loss. Flat and treeless grasslands tend to be the first places to be converted for large-scale agriculture and development, eliminating the grasses birds depend on for nesting and foraging.
Even with these factors working against the bobolink, local conservation groups have observed a marked increase in this species at Oak Spring and surrounding areas this year - a hopeful sign that thoughtful land management can help to reverse a decline in their numbers.
“Rowdy of the Meadow Study” by Kandis Phillips
“You do see the bobolinks a whole lot more so than beforehand,” said Clif Brown, Oak Spring’s head of Arboriculture, Conservation, and Landscapes. Clif has worked at Oak Spring for over 30 years. “There are definitely more birds to see with the management that we're using.”
Even when it was a working farm and private residence, Oak Spring, thoughtfully placed under a conservation easement by Paul and Bunny Mellon, has always been a haven for plants and animals. Today, Oak Spring’s 700 acres of fields and forest stand in one of the most rapidly growing parts of the state - neighboring Loudoun County, for instance, was ranked as one of the 20th fastest-growing counties in the country in 2019. As wildlife habitat shrinks elsewhere, managing land with an eye on conservation has become more critical than ever before.
“The Bobolink is gone —
The Rowdy of the Meadow —
And no one swaggers now but me —
The Presbyterian Birds
Can now resume the Meeting
He boldly interrupted that overflowing Day
When supplicating mercy
In a portentous way
He swung upon the Decalogue
And shouted let us pray —”
“What's really cool about what's going on at Oak Spring, and then some of the surrounding properties that we've surveyed, is that folks are setting aside that acreage to allow these birds to breed,” said Amy Johnson, Program Director at Virginia Working Landscapes (VWL) in Front Royal, VA. “I would say anecdotally that we're seeing an increase in bobolinks in that area, right around Upperville.”
Oak Spring’s conservation strategies include working with VWL and other local conservation organizations to monitor bird populations and advise our land management practices, with the hope of making our land welcoming to declining native wildlife.
When it comes to supporting bobolinks in particular, said Amy, giving the birds the time and space to fledge is key to ensuring their population growth. Although the migration of bobolinks is one of the longest of any songbird in North America - a 12,500 mile round trip that takes them to Argentina and back - they tend to nest within 10 kilometers of the fields where they were born.
Currently, Oak Spring’s ACL team has assigned 95 acres of grassland on the Rokeby side of the property - a former part of the original estate that was purchased by the foundation in 2017, in a rare example of estate reunification - specifically for bird conservation. In addition to that acreage, the team is working to convert the property’s vast swathes of former livestock pasture to wild grasslands and forest, in order to create habitats that will support a variety of native wildlife. The work involves a degree of experimentation in order to assess what practices are the most effective, with the aim of passing on that information to other conservation-minded landowners. Currently, the ACL team’s projects include restoring over 40 acres of former Thoroughbred pasture to native meadows using several different methods, in addition to the 23 they restored earlier this year.
Wild meadow near Loughborough. Photo by Roger Foley.
“We're tracking the timing of each treatment, how much it costs for each treatment, the man hours for the work, and we're doing vegetation and arthropod - which are basically pollinator surveys - each summer, and also soil samples each winter or fall,” explained TJ Sherman, Oak Spring’s Head of Project Management and Planning. Part of the work involves replacing the non-native and invasive plant species, which tend to thrive in nutrient-rich horse and cattle pasture, with native grasses such as big bluestem, little bluestem, Indiangrass, and broomsedge, he said.
“It's a long-term experiment, and we'll probably know by 2024, 2025 which works the best,” TJ continued. “Again, the ultimate goal is to create habitat for grassland nesting birds and other wildlife, but also to communicate that out to the general public, local public and farmers saying "here's what we did over the last 7 years, here's the most economical way to do it, here's the most successful ways to do it.” “
The practices have resulted in a change in the look of the land. Clif remembers that while Oak Spring was kept carefully mown and weeded during the last 15 or so years of Mrs. Mellon’s life, the estate had a less-manicured appearance during its earlier decades as a larger, working farm - a time when private farms and properties tended to be far more expansive than they are today, and seeing or hearing birds like the bobolink or the bobwhite quail wasn’t uncommon.
“Now, we're doing a complete 360 and trying to establish the way it used to be back in the day, and to see results is pretty gratifying,” he said. “But what’s also pretty gratifying is that I can visually see other farms starting to mow paths through their fields, and you start seeing that you're starting to rub off on some of the locals.”
The value of protecting bird species many of us remember seeing or hearing as children extends far beyond mere sentimentality. They are animals that play countless important roles in our environment and our lives, said Amy.
"Everyone has different ideas of what's important to them - as far as how birds contribute to our livelihoods, they pollinate our plants, they disperse our seeds, they plant our trees, they help control agriculture pests, but at the same time, they also inspire hobbies, and art, and music, and literature,” she said. “So they're also just a really important part of our culture and our traditions.”
Bobolinks in particular serve as inspiration for botanical artist Kandis Phillips, who spent several weeks at Oak Spring in July for a residency in which she explored the relationships between birds and the grasses in their habitats. She first became interested in studying bobolinks after reading about them in Emily Dickinson’s poetry, she wrote in an email, but was unable to observe the birds in life prior to the residency.
“Until I arrived at Oak Spring my experience of the birds was only in print; changes in farming practices and suburban development have contributed to this bird’s decline making them difficult to study,” she wrote. She is intrigued by bobolinks for many reasons, she continued, including their “amazing life history" beginning with their lengthy migration to South America, their unique plumage, and their carefully hidden nests.
Painting of a redwing blackbird nest on vellum by Kandis Phillips
“So all these facts contribute to the aura of this poetic bird: the bald, molting male who greeted me each morning with his bubbling, lilting melody, echoing the visual play of the wind rippling through the grasses,” Kandis wrote. “Portraying these birds in metalpoint or paint is a humble way to show this beauty.”
While it’s gratifying to see bobolinks at the foundation, other threatened grassland species - including the Eastern meadowlark, the grasshopper sparrow, and the bobwhite quail - have been heard or spotted on the site over the past several years by researchers and staff. For those of us at Oak Spring, the reappearance of these birds is a happy sign that our landscape management is working - and of how important it is to continue.
Grasshopper sparrow. Photo by Amy Johnson.
“As a foundation, we have the resources and capacity to make change, we also have the platforms to communicate those changes out,” said TJ. “With the 700 acres that we have, and the leadership and resources that we have, it is the right thing to do conservation wise, ecologically, and for the wildlife and to be more sustainable in general.”
“That its natural resources will continue to protect wildlife, wild flowers, birds, bees, fish. That the land be cultivated, mowed, or grazed as those in charge see fit, and that in whose custody it be left will be selfless in this pursuit of caring.”
To read more about conservation efforts and land management at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, visit https://www.osgf.org/landscape.
Banner image of a male bobolink by Amy Johnson