Gabe Clark is listening for the sounds of bobolinks to help him know where not to mow as he cuts his hayfields in New Portland this week.
Clark and a growing number of Maine farmers leave parts of their fields unharvested for about an extra month so that grassland birds like the bobolink, savannah sparrow and eastern meadowlark can survive.
The birds raise their young on the ground in June, the typical first haying period, and depart in early autumn. If mowed over, nests are destroyed.
Grassland birds and Maine farmers have connected histories; both now struggle to survive. Conservation groups and farmers are working to adjust haying practices for the birds, often using incentive payments to offset associated financial losses.
Haying is big business in Maine, covering more than 100,000 acres across the state in 2022. Another 65,000 acres yielded products like silage and green forage. There were more hay operations in Maine than any other type of farm that year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s census.
Hayfield management makes a big difference for grassland birds. Harvesting in mid-June can be dangerous for them, but if fields aren’t mowed, they rapidly grow trees and shrubs and are no longer grassland habitats.
As a naturally forested state, Maine’s land is especially prone to this, according to Amber Roth, an associate professor and wildlife management researcher at the University of Maine. Wildfires, for example, don’t keep grassland habitats from growing over because people are now so involved in land management.
“These systems don’t need people, but because we’ve so altered the system, we’ve become critical components,” she said.
Grassland birds likely became widespread in Maine when people cleared forests into fields during the 19th century, according to Noah Perlut, a professor and bird researcher at the University of New England in Biddeford. The birds prefer to nest near the centers of larger fields.
Bird habitat is shrinking as fields fall out of farm use, become woods again or turn into developments. Farmers operate on thin margins and many struggle to make ends meet, particularly dairy farms needing high-protein hay.
Fifty years ago, Maine hay was typically cut once or twice; it is now harvested two or three times a season if weather allows. First-cut hay is fibrous, while the second cut has more of the protein valuable to animals like dairy cows.
Pressure on birds is even higher this year following a wet, cold summer in 2023 that meant many farmers only got one cutting of hay. Some are trying to make up profits in 2024 by mowing early, according to the Skowhegan-based program Ag Allies.
For some farmers, even incentive payments can’t make delayed mowing work, although most want to help the birds, said Tom Aversa, board chairman of the Sebasticook Regional Land Trust, which works with Ag Allies. The forage might be necessary for their animals, and their margins are already tight.
If they can wait, “Aug. 1 is best, July 1 makes a difference and July 15 is great,” he said.
Alongside the bobolink, savannah sparrows and eastern meadowlarks, red-winged blackbirds, northern harriers and American bitterns populate these fields in decreasing numbers.
Perhaps the best-known grassland bird in Maine, the bobolink, was classified a “tipping point” species in the 2022 State of the Birds report.
That means the species has declined by more than half in the past 50 years and is on track to lose 50 percent of what remains in the next half century. Grassland birds have lost more habitat in the United States since 1970 than any other type.
Boblinks migrate to Maine from South America to raise their young, weigh about as much as two strawberries and have a song often compared to the sound of the “Star Wars” character R2-D2.
Clark leaves about 10 percent of his 300 acres of grassland at Cold Spring Ranch undisturbed for them until July, and has seen a growing bird population.
He has participated in Ag Allies, which helps farmers manage their fields around grassland birds and provides incentive payments.
Last year, it covered more than 2,000 acres and 130 Maine landowners and land trusts. That conserved 700 breeding pairs of birds, according to the group.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service offers similar payments across the country, and the Bobolink Project takes bids to pay farmers per acre for delayed mowing.
Waiting a few weeks makes an unquestionable decline in first cut hay quality and can affect the rest of the year’s harvests, Clark said. Weeds can also go to seed and establish themselves.
He doesn’t know if the ranch will receive an incentive payment this year to make up for that, but it’s worth it to his family.
“We need to be profitable in order to be able to farm,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we have to do it at the expense of Mother Nature.”
Different management approaches work for different farmers, and it’s not all delayed mowing, according to Perlut from UNE. Dairy farmers in particular need high-quality, efficient feed and may struggle more to afford waiting.
Farmers in southern Maine counties can hay in May, before the bobolinks arrive, and delay second cutting. Some have found high protein for their dairy cows in the first cutting and a larger volume of beef cattle feed in the second harvest, saving money overall, according to Perlut.
In an ideal world, he said, all of the farmer incentive programs would work this way — a kickstart to find bird-friendly practices that work financially. To his mind, it’s not just about birds; he wants the farmer to benefit as well.
