Decode the secrets of bird behaviour with CVC
Photo credit: Eastern Bluebird by Gary Hall
Credit Valley Conservation (CVC) will host a grassland tour on Thursday, June 22 from 7 to 8 p.m. at Highpoint Sideroad in Alton. Participants will go waist-deep into a grassland to discover this hidden bird habitat.
By using binoculars, participants will learn how to spot breeding pairs and how these ground-nesting birds raise their young. They’ll decode the secrets of bird behaviour and look for eastern meadowlark and bobolink.
“June is a great time to observe grasslands birds because they are busy feeding and protecting their young,” said Mark Eastman, CVC’s Agricultural Outreach Senior Coordinator. “Participants will learn more about their life cycle, how to identify them and interpret their behaviour.”
Grasslands such as native meadows, old fields, active hay fields and pasture lands provide valuable breeding, nesting and foraging habitat for grassland birds.
Grassland birds such as the bobolink travel an impressive 10,000 kilometers from South America to their summer breeding grounds in Southern Ontario. They look for open spaces with tall grasses to breed and make nests on the ground. Unfortunately their populations have been in decline and the bobolink is listed as a species-at-risk in Ontario.
Participants will hear from Mark Eastman about how farmers and rural landowners are protecting grassland birds through the Bird-Friendly Certified Hay program.
Register by June 21 at www.creditvalleyca.ca/events
Workshops are free thanks to funding from CVC’s regional and municipal partners.
Credit Valley Conservation is one of 36 conservation authorities in Ontario. Conservation authorities are provincial/municipal partnerships that manage the natural environment of a watershed, an area of land where the rain and snowmelt drain into a body of water. For more than 60 years, Credit Valley Conservation (CVC) has worked with its partners to build a thriving environment that protects, connects and sustains us. CVC is a member of Conservation Ontario.
