Tag: Birds

When Birds Attack Snakes

by Casey Conrad, SRS Science Communications Intern  • 
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s … birds attacking a Jamaican boa? In a recent study by USDA Forest Service scientists Richard Schaefer and Craig Rudolph (retired), along with colleagues from Jamaica and Washington, DC, the previously undocumented mobbing of Jamaican boas is brought to scientific light. The act of multiple birds screeching…  More 

Impact of Fire Management on Breeding Birds in the Southern Appalachians

by Sydney Marie Jones, SRS Science Communications Intern  • 
To increase the prescribed “burn window” for reaching restoration goals, land managers are now burning during winter (the dormant season) as well as spring and summer (the growing season) and fall. Management goals often include fuel reduction, oak regeneration, habitat improvement for target wildlife species, and forest restoration to conditions once created by Native Americans…  More 

Why Native Plants Are Best

by Virginia McDaniel, forestry technician  • 
This article was written to celebrate Native Plant Month in Arkansas. It was originally published in Our Ozarks. In 1733, Peter Collinson, a botanist and cloth merchant, walked with great excitement to the ship docks in London. He picked up two boxes of seeds from an American farmer named John Bartram. With these exotic seeds,…  More 

Women in Science: Katie Greenberg

by Naomi Cohen-Shields, SRS Science Communications Intern  • 
The Women in Science series features women scientists from across SRS – their education, career paths, challenges, achievements, and inspirations. Meet Cathryn (Katie) H. Greenberg, a research ecologist with the Upland Hardwood Ecology and Management unit located at the Bent Creek Experimental Forest in Asheville, North Carolina. Her research focuses on how disturbances, both natural…  More 

Bachman’s Warbler

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
From 1975 to 1979, Paul Hamel and colleagues spent 7,000 hours walking through the Francis Marion National Forest and adjacent lands in South Carolina, playing the song of the Bachman’s Warbler and listening for the response that never came. “Eventually, my adviser said ‘this is a biology department, not a history department!’ So I expanded…  More 

Forest Birds & Forest Trees

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
For every stage of forest succession, there’s a bird species that needs it. But others are flexible, thriving in many types of forests. The blue-gray gnatcatcher, eastern wood-pewee, great crested flycatcher, summer tanager, and white-breasted nuthatch are all associated with mature forests. But a recent study suggests these birds are forest generalists rather than mature…  More 

For Nesting Least Terns, Water Levels Matter

by Stephanie Worley Firley, Eastern Threat Center  • 
Least terns (Sternula antillarum) are small water birds that nest along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers and some of their tributaries, as well as coastal areas in the U.S. Monitoring the species began after the U.S. interior population of least terns was federally listed as an endangered species in 1985. “In the Missouri River basin, least…  More 

Creating Young Forests to Benefit Wildlife

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
There’s a tendency to think of the hardwood forests of the South as pristine, undisturbed, and unchanging. But forests are constantly changing, which is a good thing for disturbance-dependent species that require open structural conditions created immediately after forest disturbances or at some point early in the process of recovery. Historically and still today, windstorms,…  More 

Cutting Trees for the Early Birds

by Zoe Hoyle, SRS Science Communications  • 
U.S. Forest Service scientists recently published the results of one of the longest studies conducted on the effects of multiple forest harvest methods on early successional bird species. Published online in Forest Ecology and Management, the article by Forest Service Southern Research Station research wildlife biologist Roger Perry and retired scientist Ron Thill presents findings…  More