The Atlantic Flyway

Putting Working Lands to Work for Birds & People

Audubon Connecticut’s Forest Bird Initiative is integrating science, education, public policy, and land management expertise to ensure the continual existence of high-quality breeding habitat for forest songbirds along the Atlantic Flyway. One of the primary ways to achieve this goal is to collaborate with and provide technical assistance for landowners, land managers, and communities who wish to protect and enhance habitat for breeding forest birds on the properties they own and/or manage.

One way to do this is with a Habitat Assessment, an ecological census of current songbird and forest habitat conditions on the property conducted by an Audubon conservation biologist and a Certified Forester from the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.

Following the field inventory, the information from the inventory is put into a written report along with management options and considerations aimed at enhancing, maintaining, and/or creating quality habitat on the property.

A more thorough bird survey on the property which supplements the written report and increases our collective knowledge of forest bird species distribution in Connecticut may be done on the property.

For additional information about Habitat Assessment, visit ct.audubon.org/forest-birds or email Corrie Folsom-O’Keefe (cfolsom-okeefe@audubon.org) or Patrick Comins (pcomins@audubon.org).

(From the May, 2014 newsletter.)

New Haven Breeding Bird Atlas

Audubon Connecticut, with support from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, is looking for volunteers to participate in the third season of the New Haven Pilot Breeding Bird Atlas program. All levels of birders are welcome. Training is scheduled for May 21st at 10:00 am or 6:30 in the evening at the Bent of the River Audubon Center in Southbury, Connecticut (map). Training is not mandatory but is suggested. 

Volunteers will be asked to conduct surveys between May 25th and July 1st. We ask that volunteers visit a site two mornings during this period. The sites are located in the greater New Haven area from Milford to Madison and stretching inland as far as Cheshire.

Volunteers can survey a spot that they have been meaning to visit, a site close to home or even a site that is not usually open to the public. This is a great excuse for a walk in nature. Do something you enjoy and help birds too. To participate or for more information please contact Kim Anglace at KEA316@gmail.com.

Japanese Barberry and Lyme Disease

An article in the New London Day describes a link between the invasive Japanese barberry and Lyme disease.

Jeffrey Ward, chief scientist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station's Department of Forestry and Agriculture, and experiment station scientist Scott Williams have been doing research on the relationship between Japanese barberry, ticks that carry Lyme disease and deer overpopulation.

A highly invasive plant that forms dense canopies in forests - particularly those with high deer populations that eat most every other plant - Japanese barberry also creates moist, cool shelters that harbor ticks that carry the Lyme disease bacteria, Ward's and Williams' research has shown. Hot, dry conditions suppress tick populations.

At 28 study areas, including a parcel along Lord's Cove in Old Lyme, the two have been studying various aspects of the triangular relationship between ticks, deer and barberry, and spreading their message to land conservation organizations about the best methods for ridding forests of barberry. Deer serve as hosts for adult ticks, while the barberry functions as a nursery for ticks in their juvenile stages.

Williams said tick abundance in barberry-infested areas is 67 percent higher than those where native plants are predominant. Also, the percentage of ticks that carry the Lyme bacteria is higher - 126 infected ticks per acre versus 10 per acre in barberry-free areas, Williams said, though the reason for that is as yet unclear. After barberry removal, Ward said, tick populations drop as much as 80 percent.

Go here for the full story.