Download Bird Community Changes and Habitat Succession: How Does the

Bird Community Changes and Habitat Succession:
How Does the Restoration of the Cache River Wetlands
Affect the Avian Communities?
Prothonotary Warblers in CRW
Nest Predation
Brood
Parasitism
The Brown-headed
cowbird traditionally
followed the bison herds
as they migrated across
the Great Plains.
The cowbirds leave the open fields to lay their
eggs in the nest of a host within the forest.
Host Species of CRW
Wood Thrush
Prothonotary Warbler
Brood Parasitism
Cowbirds avrials
First to hatch…
Much larger than warblers…
Forest Fragmentation
Once large and continuous tracts of bottomland hardwood
forests were cleared which decreased wetland habitat for
the avian communities.
Post Creek
Cut- Off
The wetlands
were converted
to farm land as
they were
drained by the
Post Creek
Cut-off, a
manmade
shortcut to the
Ohio River.
Logging the Cache River Wetlands
Restoration
A Joint Venture By IDNR, USFWS, Ducks Unlimited,
The Nature Conservancy & NRCS initiated restoration
in the Cache River Wetlands.
Restoration
Native hardwoods are being planted
on WRP and agency land.
Grassy Slough Preserve in the Cache River Wetlands
The planting of bottomland hardwood tree seedlings and canebrakes,
will bring the total land restored on the former vegetable farm to
approximately 1,600 acres of forest and 700 acres of wetlands.
Pickerelweed Transplanted at Grassy
Slough
Research
Sites
Stages of Succession
0 years: Corn fields
1-3 years: Grasslands
5-10 Years: Shrubby/old field
habitat
11-15 years: Young forest
Research Objectives
To determine how the communities of
songbirds change with habitat succession
To understand how restoration may
reduce severity of cowbird parasitism in
Hypothesis:
The survey will show a relationship between the age of the forest succession & the species of
birds present…
And…
The severity of brood parasitism in the mature
forest will be reduced by reforestation off the
bottomland.
Predictions
If the severity of brood parasitism has been reduced by
restoration of the bottomland forest…then there will be fewer
female Brown-headed cowbirds detected by the survey.
Experimental Design:
Identifying Survey Fields
ARC Maps
Field Tours
Bird Identification
Visual ID
Song ID
Data Acquisition
Monitoring
Recording