Spring brings new life to Fort River
If you look at a satellite image of the Fort River Division of the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge in Hadley, Massachusetts, you’ll notice a perfect oval transcribed on the surface of the earth.
But you won’t see it when standing at ground level. Not because you lack perspective, but because it’s not there. The oval is the footprint of a horse track, long gone, carved into what was once cleared land, now recovering forest.
The track has been absorbed into the landscape as natural habitats have regained ground, restored by refuge staff to support native species like Bobolink, tree swallow, red-bellied woodpecker, red-tailed hawk, American woodcock, Eastern wild turkey, and many others.
What you will see at the ground level next time you visit Fort River is many new ways the refuge is making room for native wildlife to return through initiatives years in the making to support three focal groups of species: aerial insectivores, pollinators, and grassland-nesting birds.
“These groups have slightly different needs, but they are complementary, and all beneficiaries of the habitat that is protected in the area,” said refuge manager Andy French. That means if someone has a connection to anything in these groups — Monarch butterflies, chimney swifts, Eastern meadowlark — they will also have a connection to all of the species that are supported by the larger landscape. Many of which keep a lower profile, like the little brown bat.
“That’s really the foundation for our success in conservation,” French said. “People will care about wildlife if they have a connection to it.”
While the refuge conserves high-quality habitats to support a range of species across 40,000 acres in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, the universally accessible Fort River Birding and Nature Trail provides a unique opportunity to foster meaningful connections with the public. Nearly a decade ago, the refuge installed the one-mile long, accessible nature trail, designed to lead visitors through different habitat types, with pull offs along the way to observe wildlife, or just enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells of this outdoor oasis.
Now the refuge is installing additional features to provide more connecting points between people and wildlife, and the landscape that supports all of us.
Here is a tour of the new features at Fort River designed to benefit wildlife, and inspire humans:
Sampling menu
As you pull down the gravel driveway toward the parking lot at the trailhead, you’ll notice a new body of water on the right that was created by refuge staff this winter.
“I refer to that as the ‘classroom pond’,” French said. “It will serve as a universally accessible sampling location and outdoor classroom for students.”
It will also be a “sampling” location for wildlife. “On a cool day in the spring, this is where insects will congregate,” he said. “It will be an area where aerial insectivores — birds and bats that catch insects in flight — can focus on foraging.”
A view of a room with a view
At the west edge of the parking lot by the trailhead, a pair of new benches on a platform invites visitors to experience nesting from a bird’s-eye view: literally. The benches are poised in front of a kiosk, which will feature four live feeds from high-resolution security cameras tucked into new nesting space installed in the refuge’s boathouse this winter.
“We built 162 individual compartments to provide predator-free sites where barn swallows can nest,” said French. Comparing the compartments to “single” rooms, he explained, “Barn swallows don’t seem to like to nest where they can look at each other.”
Fortunately, they don’t seem to mind nesting where people can look at them on video.
In the future, staff may set up additional video cameras to broadcast footage from nesting structures for tree and cliff swallows and maternity boxes for bats located on the exterior of the boathouse.
Building supplies
At the northeast corner of the boat house, the refuge created another pond to provide a source of building supplies for birds like barn swallows to make their nests, which the Audubon Guide to North American Birds describes as “a cup of mud and dried grass, lined with feathers.” Cozy!
Like the classroom pond, this body of water will attract insects for aerial insectivores to forage upon on cool spring days, and will provide habitat for aquatic wildlife, like amphibians. In more seasonable weather, the surrounding grasslands are a veritable smorgasbord, offering all-you-can eat seeds, insects, and other invertebrates like earth worms.
Now leasing
In addition to optimizing nesting conditions in the boathouse, the refuge is trying to recruit a colony adjacent to suitable foraging habitat where there was no access or visible signs of prior nesting. Their approach is a combination of “If you build it, they will come” and “Location, location, location!”
Refuge staff built sixteen new nesting structures that can each accommodate three nest sites (for a total of 48), and in the structures, planted a couple of leftover nests from previous seasons (called “seed nests”). As with seed nests used in the boathouse, half were heated to 225 degrees in a pizza oven to kill any residual parasites in an effort to see if nesting birds demonstrate a preference.
French explained the goal is to attract new tenants. “First time nesters seem to key in on evidence of past nesting success,” he said.
Habitat to go
Some of the new habitat features created at the refuge will actually be deployed elsewhere thanks to partners. Hadley Girl Scout Troops 64645 and 11914 worked toward their Outdoor Journey Badge by helping refuge staff build bird houses, bat boxes, and barn swallow nesting structures, which they installed in various locations in the community. A nesting structure signed by the scouts will be mounted in the aerial-insectivore nesting observation exhibit by the trailhead.
Guess what: you can support habitat remotely too! “There are a lot things people can do at home to support these species,” French said. “From planting pollinator gardens, to mowing your lawn less frequently, to leaving a portion of it alone for native vegetation grow, to using less pesticides, or none at all.”
And sometimes making room for wildlife just means learning to see the world from their perspective. While there are many things people look forward to about the approach of spring — longer days, milder weather, flowers blooming, trees leafing out — there are many things we dread — mud, insects, pollen-induced allergies.
For aerial insectivores, pollinators, and grassland birds, those are the highlights. Once you have had an opportunity to see a little brown bat zipping through the sky at dusk foraging for insects, or a video feed of a female barn swallow tending to her young in a feather-lined mud cup — you may start to think of them as spring highlights too.
