I’ve been musing along a different line, wondering if a preemptive approach is possible.
It takes time to mow the big fields that grassland nesters favor, and the hay farmer can’t mow all of them simultaneously. The work of haying season has to begin somewhere, and start early enough that the farmer can get through it all. So each year some field will be selected to go first, and another second, and the rest must wait their turns. Clearly some fields that are later in the queue can produce a crop of fledglings before it’s their turn to be mowed; otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation. So, suppose for the moment that the decision about which fields to mow early could be made before nesting had even begun. If there was then some way to discourage the birds from selecting those particular fields to nest in, the effect would be to direct them to the fields slated for later mowing... -Geo -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
