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
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.
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: