Thanks to generous farmers and our tenacious field staff, we had a successful second field season studying Bobolink in the Ottawa Valley. By monitoring the breeding status of 112 Bobolink territories on 11 cattle farms, we collected the necessary data for our projects, including our two primary questions about how these ground-nesting birds and cattle can better coexist on rotationally-grazed farms. This was the second year we worked with farmers to provide un-grazed refuges for Bobolink in rotationally-grazed cattle pastures. Again this year, the birds were able to build nests and fledge young from the small refuges. Depending on the number of cattle and duration of grazing, some nests were trampled in grazed pastures.

In 2017, we also asked a new question: can Bobolink tolerate some light grazing by cattle early in the breeding season and still fledge young? We saw some evidence that it might be possible. We worked with farmers to identify pastures that their cattle could graze during late May and early June at about half of the normal grazing pressure. The Bobolink arrived in these pastures after migration and established territories. The cattle entered shortly afterwards and began grazing. In some cases, the Bobolink remained in the pasture, in others, some birds moved to an adjacent field.

After the cattle left, we found that most nests had not been trampled. Some of the birds that had vacated the field returned to build a new nest and most birds whose nests had been trampled remained and built new nests. More than half of the Bobolink nests in these lightly grazed pastures subsequently fledged young, even though the vegetation was shorter than in un-grazed fields (which could expose the nests to predators).

Now that we have the data on nesting Bobolink and cattle grazing for both experiments, we’ll begin analyzing to assess what we’ve learned and how different grazing practices can provide nesting areas for the birds. There’s still a long way to go to identify farming practices that are both compatible with Bobolink nesting and viable for farmers, but we’re learning more each year and making progress toward supporting the conservation of these gregarious birds.