The Bobolink Project: Helping Farmers Protect Grassland Birds

Methods

Summary

After farms have been selected as participants in 2017, field assistants will be tasked with visiting those sites during late May – early June, and again during mid-July – early August. During the initial visit, variable distance point count data will be collected at each farm to provide an index of the number of pairs of breeding Bobolinks present. During the second visit, each farm will be revisited, and counts based on walking transects will be used to indicate numbers of juvenile birds that were fledged.

Challenges

We would also like to pair each participating farm with a nearby non-participating farm and collect data at the non-participating sites to compare the benefits accrued by farm participation in The Bobolink Project. However, it may be difficult to receive permission from the non-participating owners to survey their fields. If we do not receive access on non-participating farms then we will conduct counts from public roads bordering non-participating fields.