Shelburne Farms’ plan for the birds

An abandoned power pole at Shelburne Farms has been adapted to connect the farm with a global network of antennas tracking the flight patterns of migrating creatures.

The Motus radio telemetry tracking station will further advance Shelburne Farms’ place at the head of the line in research into the travel habits of bobolinks — and other birds, bats and even migrating insects like monarch butterflies.

Farm manager Sam Dixon said the telemetry tracking station at the farm’s dairy barn resembles an old-time television antenna and advances a rewarding partnership between the farm and researchers.

Noah Perlut, a professor in the marine and environmental program at the University of New England, said he has been studying bobolinks on Shelburne Farms for 20 years, since he was in graduate school at the University of Vermont. The Motus tracking system boosts his research capabilities by leaps and bounds.

Motus is not an acronym. It’s from the Latin term meaning movement.

The system collects data about any flying creature that’s been tagged and comes within 15 kilometers (almost 10 miles) of the antenna. It immediately records not only the species but the specific animal.

Motus feeds into a database maintained by Birds Canada. This information is then immediately available to anyone else who is plugged into the system around the world.

Perlut said the initiative to put a tracking station at the farm started when a colleague from Pennsylvania called because she’d gotten a grant to put nanotags on bobolinks. A bird with a nanotag sends a signal detectable by the Motus system. Some nanotags are even small enough to go on larger insects such as butterflies or dragonflies.

Perlut’s colleague wanted his expertise on how to catch and tag bobolinks. But she also wondered if he’d be interested in expanding the program by nanotagging bobolinks in Vermont.

By a stroke of luck and serendipitous coincidence, Perlut connected with Todd Alleger, a former student of his from the University of Vermont.

Alleger works for a small land trust in southeastern Pennsylvania that is part of a larger program — the Northeast Motus Collaboration — working to establish 50 Motus towers across the Northeast. The Northeast Motus Collaboration is part of an even larger program putting up Motus towers across the world.

Recently, Alleger and his team put up another Vermont tower in the Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge north of St. Albans. Their goal is to have at least six Motus telemetry tracking stations up across the state within the year.

This project is funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and involves lots of governmental and nonprofit organizations, including the Audubon Society, in the six northeastern states.

Alleger said for the past four years, his organization has managed 100 stations between Maryland and Maine that are part of the mid-Atlantic Motus project.

One of the more rewarding research projects Alleger said he’d participated in was using the Motus to follow the red knot, an endangered shore bird they were able to follow from Pennsylvania to the Arctic and learn the number of days the migration took.

“If the towers weren’t there, we wouldn’t have that information,” Alleger said.

Dixon said one result of the bobolink research over the years at Shelburne Farms is a change to their hay mowing schedule. Because of his studies, Perlut encouraged them to have their first mow earlier in the spring and their second mow later in the summer.

Perlut said when he first started studying bobolinks at Shelburne Farms, the farm’s first mow came around Memorial Day, with the second cut about 35-40 days later. Now, the farm first mows 10 days earlier and waits for about 65 days before the second mow. This gives the chicks time to hatch, learn to fly and start out on their own — and for their parents to experience the complex emotions caused by empty nest syndrome.

“This increases the birds’ ability to raise young chicks successfully from zero offspring per year to each female fledging three offspring per year, which is almost the same as if the field has never been cut at all,” Perlut said.

And the impact on the hay yield is minimal, Dixon said. The first mow produces high quality hay that’s excellent feed for the dairy cows. The second mow produces hay that’s good for the farm’s heifers and sheep.

Perlut said he fell in love with bobolinks two decades ago because they are beautiful, magical and very complex birds.

In late August after the bobolinks breed in Shelburne, they fly to the coast of New Jersey. From there they fly nonstop over the ocean to Venezuela where they spend a month. From Venezuela they fly to Bolivia where they stay for a short vacay and then fly to Argentina, usually arriving in December with plenty of shopping days before Christmas.

When the bobolinks leave in April, they fly almost non-stop back to Vermont in two to three weeks.

“The amazing part is that, even though they’re in Argentina in the summer, they don’t breed there. They’re only there to eat,” Perlut said.

The bobolinks from Shelburne Farms appear to return from Argentina to almost the same fields to mate. Bobolinks from other parts of the country don’t seem to be as diligent about returning to the exact same places they came from as those from this area.

Dixon said the guests at Sheburne Farms are delighted to see the bobolinks return in the spring.

“The bobolinks in the fields are quite interesting and colorful birds with a beautiful song,” Dixon said. “Being involved in this project with Noah has been some of the most interesting and rewarding work that I’ve done in the 25 years I’ve been at Shelburne Farms.”