There was touching essay in the NY Times the other day, retrievable at
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/opinion/silent-seashores.html?hp&action=cick&pgtype=Homepage&module=ccolumn-top-span-regionĀ®ion=ccolumn-top-span-region&WT.nav=ccolumn-top-span-region&_r=0
The shrinking of shorebird numbers here in Ohio has been
steady or even drastic, and birders with histories of twenty years or
fewer may not realize it. Nearly 50 species have been reliably reported
in Ohio, 37 of them usually reported yearly---more than the vaunted
warblers. We largely harbor shorebirds bound for their breeding ranges
in remote areas of Canada, though six species--killdeer, spotted
sandpiper, upland sandpiper, Wilson's snipe, American woodcock, and
Wilson's phalarope--are known to breed here now, and piping plovers once
bred in every Lakeside county and were seen inland with regularity as
migrants. Some old reports suggest long-billed curlews nested in Ohio in
days long ago.
These declines in numbers have many causes. Only a few species are now
legal to hunt in Ohio. South America now provides fewer safe wintering
areas, where increasingly hunters "harvest" scary numbers of these birds
in migration there and in Central America. Here, habitat is the problem.
One thing Ohioans can do for these birds is to enlarge and protect the
areas in which they can find food and shelter on migration or in nest
sites. Too many areas we set aside for wildlife do not resemble
prehistoric Ohio, and ignore the needs of shorebirds and other non-game
species. Needless to deny, good stopover and nesting sites here are
fewer than they once were.
Doing something is not easy, but I offer an example. Here in the
Columbus area, the Metro Parks system acquired hundreds of acres of corn
and beans on the west side of Franklin County, and cleared them in 2011,
ripping out over a hundred miles of drain tiles. Birders converged on
this area later, where natural water regimes were allowed to prevail,
and native plants sowed. The shorebirding was fabulous: nearly
immediately ponds appeared, and damp meadows and hillocks began to
emerge. Local observers converged on all the sprouting native vegetation
and new landforms caused by unhampered drainage. Thirty-some shorebird
species appeared that year--with reports of flocks of 2000 pectoral
sandpipers, a thousand golden-plovers, 200 snipes, 170 killdeers, 101
lesser yellowlegs--and 29 other species that hadn't been noticed in the
area for a hundred years or more.
Since that time, this area has matured, and--as planned--has come to
resemble its primeval state. The shorebird habitats have shrunk,
but natural species typical of such areas--nesting rails, waterfowl,
sparrows, raptors, etc.--have returned, and promise to remain. Smaller
stable refugia for long-distance shorebird migrants are seen alongside
the cattail borders of water bodies. The brief period of extravagant
numbers of migrant shorebirds are behind us, but this Ohio spot now
plays a new part in providing natural habitat for them.
Maybe we shouldn't concentrate on providing habitat only for migrant
waterfowl---which of course have their own problems, but not so much as
shorebirds in Ohio--but for other birds that once were always their
companions. There was a day when shorebirds resorted to "sky-ponds," low
spots out in agricultural fields where water and migrants gathered, but
now the chemicals in those fields deter them. Recreational bodies of
water should tolerate a few areas of "just mud,"
and duck ponds should have shallows and sloped muddy margins. Who knows,
a couple of Lake Erie beaches could be made off-limits to human
recreation, but on-limits for plovers. Wildlife areas could easily be
designed to accommodate shorebirds on purpose, rather just as an
accidental feature.
I don't know if such measures will help much to decelerate the alarming
losses of shorebirds, but surely they can do no harm.
Bill Whan
Columbus
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