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Turning pasture into bird habitat (1 Viewer)

Hello everybody that's reading this. I currently live in Oklahoma. My dad owns 13 acres of land in Idaho, 3 of which is currently an unoccupied pasture, surrounded by woodland. in this patch, i hope to create a suitable habitat for breeding, wintering, and migratory birds. i plan on moving to idaho in a few years. currently, i visit idaho twice a year for a couple weeks each visit, to see wildlife and watch birds. My hope is to plant many trees, shrubs, and other plants and morph it into an amazing place for birds, so i can enjoy the avian creatures even more than i already do. So the reason I'm posting this: I'm no botanist, and need some assistance learning about what i should plant in this area. the pasture receives natural rain, and has no irrigation system. it is slightly low elevation for the area (5,550 ft.).It is in hardiness area 4. i did a little research, and am thinking about planting hawthorn, pear/apple, willow, blue spruce, and mulberry, possibly raspberry and lilac bushes, grape vine, and having some annual flowers to add some color, and to attract hummingbirds and orioles. Of course, these are just assumptions and are not final. If anybody could give me their opinions of what to plant, and how i could change/improve the habitat, It'd be great. Thank you for reading!
 
Hi Nutcracker and a warm welcome to you from all the Staff and Moderators.

Whatever you plant, make sure that it is a native species for your area. You'll need a mix of spring flowering flowers and shrubs through to autumn berries and seeds and winter cover.

And don't forget the value of other wildlife to an ecology, from insects to mammals.

I hope you enjoy your time here with us. Please let us know how your project progresses.
 
Hi Nutcracker135, this is a fantastic thing to do, and a project that will bring great satisfaction. :t:

I know virtually nothing about American birds or ecology, but I have done this type of thing many times before on much larger scales out here.

By way of encouragement, I will relay that one of the best moments of my life was seeing a Little Eagle (roughly equivalent to your Red-tailed Hawks) successfully hunt a feral introduced rabbit (real pests out here) from a Yellow Box tree no more than 20ft high that I had planted half a dozen years earlier as a seedling!

Basically you want to provide food, shelter, water, and breeding or hunting territories for the birds and attendant wildlife. You want the habitat created to be "messy" ie. structurally complex.

As Delia said, make sure what you plant is endemic. I always extend this and plant from nearby soil/climate communities as well to allow for the affects of climate change - I do this from both harsher and more gentle ecosystems than those present.

You want to create the habitat in such a way that it mimics old growth environments. You can do this by augmenting the growing plantings with added structure - hollows, branches on the ground, stacked sticks, bark homes, mulch and rock piles, nest boxes, and burrows, water holding depressions and reed beds etc etc etc. The more complex the better.

Have both dense shelter (ie. prickly stuff for the small birds, critters) and more open vegetation. Make sure to provide the raw materials for nesting / home building - bark, straw, fluff from reed heads, mud, insect holes etc, etc.

Pay careful attention to your creations connectivity with surrounding and bordering established mature vegetation / landscape corridors.

Maximize the diversity of plantings to provide year round food and shelter by paying attention to flowering times, insect, and small critter (such as reptiles - lizards etc) habitat and food sources.

You want all the layers represented together - grasses, forbs, ground covers, reeds, rushes, low shrubs, large shrubs, saplings, mature trees, etc.

Try and have a large water feature with a protected, isolated island in the middle. Make the edges fractal in nature -ie. as much total circumference as possible with thousands of irregular edge nooks and crannies. Have changing edge slopes and retention pond levels to maintain reed etc health in dry times.
# Have flood out areas for rich pickings during heavy inundation.

* Start with a scaled plan drawing.
* Get lists of local vegetation.
* Pay attention to any view corridors you want to retain.
* Pay attention to topography and natural water flows, accumulation - are there areas where ephemeral wetlands form or could be created. Use the water that ends up downhill to naturally water your thirstier, more lush vegetation.
* Pay attention to soil types and allocate plants accordingly.
* Pay attention to aspect and the effect this has on solar isolation and winds. Utilize or protect (windbreaks etc) from these as required.
* Plant symbiotically - ie. nitrogen fixing legumes or shrubs right next to and surrounding growing trees etc.
* Plant denser than the finished layout - I use a hexagonal pattern which allows access for slashers etc, and offers infinite scalability, and then use ecological thinning as plantings mature to provide materials ( or products, such as fence posts, firewood, etc).
* Pay attention to final spacing and how this will affect target species.
* Use depressions etc for self watering. Plant seedlings deep - half way up their trunks for creekside seedlings etc.
* There's heaps more, but that will do for a start.

# protect your plantings from browsing rabbits /other wildlife etc.

Have fun - Plan - and just start! ..... keep your eyes and mind open to learning from what you see.

You might even graduate to some advanced techniques - such as feeding livestock your native vegetation seeds, then letting them roam about the place, p**ing your plantings into place for you !



Chosun :gh:
 
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Both Audubon and the National Wildlife Federation have tools on their websites designed to help people find animal/bird friendly plants that are native to specific areas. If I am correct, they also provide local supply locations for the recommended plants. The link to each native plant finder is below:
NWF Native Plant Finder
Audubon Native Plant Finder
Hope you find these useful!
 
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Hi,

My dad owns 13 acres of land in Idaho, 3 of which is currently an unoccupied pasture, surrounded by woodland. in this patch, i hope to create a suitable habitat for breeding, wintering, and migratory birds.

Knowing nothing about Idaho, what's the perception of biotope quality of low-intensity grazed pasture there?

Just asking because in Northern Germany (which is completely different from Idaho in most aspects :), wetland meadows are very important for many bird species, with small numbers of grazing animals being kept in many bird reserves to prevent overgrowth of the pasture.

Totally different situation of course, I'm merely curious :)

Regards,

Henning
 
I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but if you're speaking of grazing animals on the patch, there is currently no grazing animals, but there used to be a horse and a few cattle in the patch (5 years ago). I said "pasture" merely because i thought grassland wouldn't be a great description of the area. The grass is currently about 3 feet tall and doesn't seem like there has ever been grazing animals there.

Around the general eastern Idaho area, much land is devoted to horses and cattle, with little patches of woodland here and there, many wildlife areas (w/ no pasture), and TONS of decorative pine/spruce trees in front and backyards. I don't necessarily birdwatch in pastures, but i don't see many birds there because it is mainly overgrazed and crowded with animals, so I wouldn't consider them super important to birds here.

I hope that answered your question! (if it didn't i'm glad to add more information about the area)
 
Hi,

I don't necessarily birdwatch in pastures, but i don't see many birds there because it is mainly overgrazed and crowded with animals, so I wouldn't consider them super important to birds here.

Ah, thanks - these overgrazed areas are indeed bad for birds, we have a lot of these in Germany too.

And unfortunately, we have very few low-intensity grazing pastures left, while many bird species living here need exactly these (which were much more common in the past). Accordingly, in Germany this kind of pasture is considered a high-quality biotope. (That's why I was wondering about Idaho.)

Here is an example for a reserve nearby that covers a traditional low-intensity grazing area, just to illustrate what it looks like:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natur...en#/media/File:KirchwerderWiesen_Panorama.jpg

(These meadows are a breeding biotope for around 60 bird species.)

From what I've read about the preservation measures, they applied many of the principles outlined in Chosun's highly informative post :) In particular, they created a small lake with an island, and I think they additionally placed some small floating platforms on the lake so black terns can breed there. The area is off-limits for hikers though, and I only got a glance of nisting terns one year when they built their nests in one of the typical broad and shallow ditches. One can often see them catching insects in the vicinity of the lake, however.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)
 
Grassland notes

Nutcracker135, as Henning said, a grassland can be a rich source of bird habitat. The difference between a grassland and a pasture is not just the length of the grass!

Pastures tend to be toward monoculture, fertilized, perhaps sprayed for weeds, and intensively grazed.

A (native) grassland consists of multiple multiple species, heights, structures, and types of native grasses, flowers, forbs, and some ground cover shrubs etc. It often borders open woodland, and there is an ongoing tension between advance and retreat of the two biotopes, combined with changing climate (yes! it has changed for millennia in cycles naturally, and will continue to do so :) , seasonal variations (La Nina/El Nino effects as well as longer term cycles), fire effects, endemic species grazing pressure and their natural predators, etc. :cat:

Of course along comes man and mucks the whole thing up with roads, drainage ditches, culverts, fences, clearing, 'development', and other forms of fragmentation, modification (increase/reduction) of endemic grazing animals (including insects like locusts etc), and elimination, exclusion, or even local extinction of predators (dingo proof fences, hunting of wolves to local extinction etc, etc)

In one of the small projects I undertook (25 acres of former pasture and remnant Grassy Box Gum Woodland), I recorded ~ 150 species of birds on the property over half a dozen years of rehabilitation. Runs of it were left as open grassland 2ft - 4ft high depending on season (augmented with multiple plantings of structural grasses - large poa species indigenous here, and many constructed critter homes for lizards, small endangered marsupials etc). In the middle of this open grassland was a big 'S' shaped depression bisecting it - during times of flood this would fill up and effectively function like a small creek (a foot deep, 50ft wide, with little detectable flow) to transport water through the property. To look at it during dry times it would just look like a paddock, but with significant rain would come alive with lush forbs, small reed type plants, and so many frogs and insects that the noise was deafening! :eek!:

The idea is to make it like 'old growth' mature grassland and habitat. Unless you are going to live for several hundred years you will need to accelerate the progress using the augmentation techniques I mentioned earlier.

Key amongst these is the protection of your plantings from grazing pressure of native animals - out here it is kangaroos, and ferals - rabbits. To do this, in the end, as the mob size got up to a 100 roos, and their mating rights fights were snapping my 6ft high saplings, and making walking at dusk a risky proposition (- see my thread when kangaroos attack http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=325659), I used steel mesh lengths 5ft wide (so high) and bent into a circle and pegged or staked to the ground to allow survival.

Another key measure to help naturally control the feral rabbit population was the provision of 'raptor perches' - simply round fence logs placed in the ground vertically at various heights 5ft - 20ft with and without small diameter cross perch branches on top, as well as large nesting hollows in nearby mature trees for owls. This worked so well that a Spotted Harrier family took up nesting in one of the mature trees on the edge. This caused some serious argy - bargy with the resident Little Eagle family 500m down the creek! There was enough food though that they managed to co-exist, along with Black-Shouldered Kites, Nankeen Kestrels, Sparrow- and Goshawks, and all manner of Falcons, Kites, and even passing Wedge-tailed Eagles, and several species of Owls.

Be very careful of any changes to natural water flows - even in a flat paddock. You only need branch and bark litter a few inches to half a foot high (in a semi-circular layout 50-100ft diameter to create lush zones for wetland forms, amphibians etc) - see my thread on Natural Sequence Farming and follow the links http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?p=3546707#post3546707 , to learn more, and for erosion control measures. Perhaps the greatest moment on that project was after a record summer day rain event (4 inches), where creeks flooded, and paddock depressions filled up, that I recorded the greatest sighting of my life ---- A Brolga !! o:D This bird was ~200km away from present day recorded wetland range, and only visited for half a morning, and get this - to feed in a flooded paddock depression only the size of your lounge room! Upon further questioning of some of the old timers, it seems they were infrequent floodtime visitors to the region when it contained larger permanent and ephemeral wetlands before they were drained for pastures, and/or ruined by cattle grazing.

The point of this is to reinforce the value of ephemeral wetlands, and floodout zones, as well as the more obvious creeks and ponds, dams, lakes.

Think of your project more from the viewpoint of what food (insects, seeds, berries, nectar, critters, etc) you will provide for the birds you wish to attract, what habitat, what shelter and homes.

Below I have attached a photo of the project mentioned above. Hidden in the grass are ephemeral wetland depressions, semi-permanent wetland ponds, and permanent dam with island refuge. It is rare (only 1% remnant) endangered Grassy Box Gum Woodland, with Kangaroo Grass as the predominately native species.

The large trees in the background are the remnant creek line mature vegetation (100's of years old, and some 6ft + diameter). The smaller trees planted nearby are in open woodland configuration - the 50-100ft 'rooms' between them and existing woodland would see swarms of Welcome Swallows going ballistic chasing insects, Woodswallows higher up, and the odd Little Falcon tearing through trying to catch them or the slower Red-Rumped Parrots, or Crested Pigeons. I would have had 75 hollows of various sizes carved out of logs placed in trees around the place, and a similar amount of ad-hoc shelters on the ground for critters. The 20ft high Yellow Box tree in the foreground is the one where the Little Eagle caught the rabbit.
IMG_0997.jpg
One last thing - don't spray weeds - if it grows, it's good! Slash/Mulch them before they set seed, and eventually they'll transition to perennial native species. They are only there as colonizers to repair the land and add fertility. Again see the NSF material. Also, early on in your planting project you may have to manually remove some insect overload - caterpillars etc. Again, don't spray, eventually the grub eating Cuckoos, and other insect eating predatory insects and birds will move in to balance things out.

All in all, very enjoyable 'work', and well worthwhile :t:


Chosun :gh:
 
Hi Chosun,

The idea is to make it like 'old growth' mature grassland and habitat. Unless you are going to live for several hundred years you will need to accelerate the progress using the augmentation techniques I mentioned earlier.

Thanks a lot for the fascinating inside view!

I believe the reserve in Hamburg originally was in fact shaped over several hundred years by the influence of humans and their domesticated animals, creating a rich environment for meadow-breeding birds that has fallen victim to agricultural intensification (with near catastrophic consequences for many bird species).

Just as you describe, the restoration, which is still ongoing, takes the fast track. One of the most recent measures was to erect electrically actuated weirs to restrict drainage, to restore the wet conditions typical in past centuries when there were no power-operated earth movers. Exactly the point you were making about controlling water levels to shape the biotope!

The difference to the grasslands you describe is that in Northern Germany, the fences are usually there to keep the grazers in, not out :) But that's because for centuries, farmers had always kept small numbers of cattle there, so they are part of the biotope. In German, there's even a term "extensive grazing" as the opposite to "intensive grazing", but I believe that doesn't translate to English, and I've been unable to figure out the proper term (if there even is one).

Regards,

Henning
 
How about "low intensity grazing"?

This is a terrific thread: firstly that Nutcracker has an ambition to restore habitat function on his/her land and secondly for the incredible feedback on great projects from elsewhere in the world.

It's great to learn that there is a high degree of sophistication already in place and it would be wonderful to har how individuals or groups working at a small scale are building the habitats they want to bird in.

Living in a 22nd floor apartment in Hong Kong this is not currently an option for me, so I'd be delighted to vicariously enjoy hearing about what other have achieved.

Any recommmendations for threads on BF or websites elsewhere would be most welcome.

Cheers
Mike
 
Hi Henning,

Thanks for the overseas insights. That's a very interesting technical solution to a natural problem in Hamburg .... though there are more natural solutions!

For anyone really interested then study the work of Peter Andrews - his two books are mind boggling. One of his concepts is creating a freshwater lens in pastures/meadows via raising stream beds and slowing water flow with "leaky dams" and wetlands. Of course you largely have to keep the 'lawnmowers' (grazing animals) out of the sensitive wetland areas, especially here, introduced hard hoofed species foreign to this country such as cattle, sheep, horses, pigs, goats, buffalo etc. Follow the links in the Natural Sequence Farming thread to learn more: http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=342128

Yes. Two key components as you say are water (in the soils) and grazing.

The grazing can be the hard part that requires lots of management. You are basically trying to mimic the ancient process of indigenous (and so with low impact on the soil structure) megafauna grazing and natural limits to their impact by co-evolved predatory pressure either reducing their numbers or moving them on, with both groups being free to roam to different fields/areas without fences, obstructions like roads and towns, or borders. Also, most natural environments would have had multi-species grazing and the vegetation would have evolved with that. Some modern Permaculture systems mimic this.

Some historical and domestic grazing practices did much damage as you say. There is probably much confusion around terminology, even before language enters the equation, but it is 'set stocking' even at low density that did/does the damage, as the stock tend to eat the most desireable/nutritious/delicate species Completely out first, before moving down the scale to the less palatable species. Higher density 'set stocking' is even much worse. This is what stuffed our wetlands, hydrological functioning, soil building and country.

Current best practice (and the only way to deal with foreign hard hoofed livestock in this country) is to use "Rotational Grazing" - this fences off multiple small grazing areas and then has large numbers of stock graze the paddock for a short time (a week or two) which depends on seasonal conditions. Usually this entails grazing the paddock until the desired tonnage of vegetative matter and ground cover remains, and then they are all moved to a fresh paddock. Grazing is also excluded at times of year before the perennial pastures set seed. This ensures sustainability, and mimics the grazers being moved on by predators.

The rationale behind this is that the stock move into a well vegetated (and hence the soil is protected) paddock that has already set seed. The large stock numbers per area mean that the stock are forced to eat everything evenly, not just the delicacies. The rest of the mature vegetation is trampled (mulched) due to the lack of room and competition among stock. They are then all removed before they eat the place bare. You might follow on from a herd of cattle with a mob of sheep during good times - again removing them before they eat the place to the ground.

The reduced (but not permanently damaged) vegetation above the ground causes a correlating die off or reduction (again, not to levels that damage ongoing sustainability) of root mass below the ground, thus adding carbon to the soil. The remaining vegetation, mulch, and manure is fully able to utilize any rainfall - the idea being to capture all the rainfall on the property and store it in the soil, minimizing run off. This is how soil is built, which makes a novel change from the erosive rural grazing and agricultural practices throughout history.

There are ways of turbocharging even this using the Natural Sequence Farming techniques for hydrological cycle restoration (basically smoothing the peaks and troughs of water availability to the soil and vegetation) enhancing efficiency, resilience, and drought tolerance. Even further gains can be made by using a technique developed in the Central West of NSW called 'No Kill Pasture Cropping'.

Obviously this is not really as wildlife friendly as a 'natural' grassland, and the paddocks basically become vegetation hence meat, fibre, leather and other animal product, production factories. It is recommended that each farm dedicate 30-40% (with 10% as core old growth wilderness) of the total property area to connected native indigenous vegetation - preferably mature and diverse, in order to retain nearly all of the habitat functioning for wildlife.

Another type of grazing can be used for highly sensitive wetland areas. This is known as "Crash Grazing". This involves moderate numbers of stock grazing very quickly over a day or two at an appropriate time of year - ie. when perennial plants have already set seed, when birds and animals within have already bred and fledged young, and conditions are dry enough (to minimize damage). So quite a lot of constraints on that one, and its use is meant to be rare (once in several years), as the wetlands form a vital natural damming, water efficiency and storage function for soils.

This country has similar dryish climate to Idaho, though mostly without the snow. The soils are rather fragile, with the best of them being alluvial volcanic basalt based - and thus vegetative ground cover is key. Hard hoofed animals and white settlement clearing and grazing practices have done enormous damage, with only 1% of our most endangered woodlands left, 3/4 of wetlands destroyed, and traditional European 'set' grazing, and over allocation of irrigation water has seen the entire Murray-Darling Basin degraded. To put the enormity of this is perspective, the Basin spans 4 States and over 1 million square kilometers ..... that's the entire land area of Germany AND France Combined ......

This has had a tangible negative (70% reduction over 30 years) effect on bird life. See this thread for more details: http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=345778

I'm really not too informed of the exact data on hard hoofed stock and European and American biotopes, but the same principles would apply, though perhaps with higher limits due to the mostly cooler, wetter climates and co-evolution of vegetation, fauna, and biotopes.

Due to the enormous damage done worldwide, any project to help the situation, no matter how small, is welcome. :t:


Chosun :gh:
 
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How about "low intensity grazing"?

This is a terrific thread: firstly that Nutcracker has an ambition to restore habitat function on his/her land and secondly for the incredible feedback on great projects from elsewhere in the world.

It's great to learn that there is a high degree of sophistication already in place and it would be wonderful to har how individuals or groups working at a small scale are building the habitats they want to bird in.

Living in a 22nd floor apartment in Hong Kong this is not currently an option for me, so I'd be delighted to vicariously enjoy hearing about what other have achieved.

Any recommmendations for threads on BF or websites elsewhere would be most welcome.

Cheers
Mike
Mike, enthusiasm for the subject is always welcome !

Being the driest, flattest continent on earth makes for a pretty tough school, and so our environmental science, extension programs and practice is some of the best in the world.

I have been lucky enough to be involved in some of this.

For you, and anyone else interested, try these .....

My best recommendation would be to read the works of gift to humanity, Peter Andrews OAM. He is truly a once in the lifetime of a nation, world even, visionary, a guru. The Stephen Hawking of Landscape Whispering! The thread I started gives all the links necessary: http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=342128

I would highly recommend purchasing and reading Peter's two brilliant books:
"BACK from the BRINK"
"BEYOND the BRINK"

Don't worry if it takes you 2 or 3 readings to start to understand - you wouldn't be alone!

Another guy who knows his stuff (erosion control) is Craig Sponholtz of Watershed Artisans: http://www.watershedartisans.com/
Hailing from the South-west USA, lots of the techniques are applicable to Australia, Africa, Middle East, China, Mid-West America (Idaho :), and other dry, highly erosive regions of the world.

Of broader environmental focus (grasslands, grazing, etc) from the same region is the Quivira Coalition: http://www.quiviracoalition.org/

Land care Australia does lots of front line grass roots work: https://landcareaustralia.org.au/

The Grassy Box Woodland Conservation Management Network does likewise specialising in this endangered biotope: https://www.gbwcmn.net.au/home

You could also look at Carbon Farmers of Australia: https://www.carbonfarmersofaustralia.com.au/carbon-farming/

Pasture Cropping is another ground breaking world revolution: http://www.pasturecropping.com/
http://www.winona.net.au/pasture-cropping
Also research "No Kill Pasture Cropping"

I would highly recommend you get the gorgeous book, Woodlands: A disappearing Landscape:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1176532.Woodlands_Woodlands

In fact, read anything by Professor David Lindenmayer AO : https://www.google.com.au/search?q=...hWBurwKHe8sCmUQ_AUIBigA&biw=360&bih=592&dpr=3

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lindenmayer


Hope that helps! :cat:


Chosun :gh:
 
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Call of the Reed Warbler - Charles Massy

I just wanted to thank Mike in HK for putting me onto this book ..... more good work in the Regenerative Agriculture space.

Important because in this country with it's 'iron'bark trees, lack of woodpeckers (who lets face it would only end up with a massive headache and nothing to show for it anyway :) , and ancient soils, the first step in providing a hollow in a mature tree for birds to live in, many hundreds or even thousands and tens of thousands of years down the track, is the formation grain by grain of healthy soils.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...r-wants-a-revolution-how-is-this-not-genocide

Excellent interview with the author here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5xlc-5gnbaQ

And a beautiful Reed Warbler here :)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tHHovIAT7BU



Chosun :gh:
 
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