Heading home

Though summer is progressing, we can look forward to another several weeks of warm weather and all the activities that go with it. If you are like me, these activities include being outside as much as possible and enjoying what nature has to offer.If you recall several columns back, I wrote about bird songs and how the woods and meadows come alive with the sounds of birds identifying and defending territory in which to raise their young. That was only weeks ago, back in mid-May when our migratory songbirds returned from their wintering grounds to their nurseries. Our forests are now completing their important role of providing the habitat necessary for migratory birds to replenish their populations with a new generation of their species. If you head into the woods these days, the sounds are much different, much quieter. The veeries are still singing, as is the occasional wood thrush. Red-eyed vireos are still adamantly announcing their presence and the phoebes, many now raising their second set of young, are still singing outside our windows. Yet many birds have already finished their breeding cycle and are getting ready to make the journey home. This is especially true of the birds that arrived here the earliest in spring. It takes most songbirds about 60 days to produce and fledge their young and prepare for migration. Once the young are out of the nest and on their own, there is no reason to stick around.You will notice that I allude to the fact that these birds are just visitors here. Indeed, they are only in our region for about three months. They then return to the tropics for the remaining nine. Of course there is significant time out of those nine months spent migrating the hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles between breeding and wintering grounds. I will write more about the phenomenon of migration in future columns.I was prompted to write about this subject in this week’s column not only because our woods are noticeably quieter, but because I have had the opportunity to work with a young conservationist from Belize over the past eight weeks. He has been working with our bird banding, bird monitoring and education staff to gain experience and information that he will take back to Belize. He will put that knowledge to use in his work to conserve and monitor bird populations on more than 200,000 acres of habitat managed by the Belize Audubon Society. This sharing of information, challenges and cultures is essential to furthering the protection of habitats at both ends of the migratory route (and throughout the Atlantic flyway) to assure that the birds that we enjoy every summer return every spring. We wish him luck as he heads home to help protect the birds that will be arriving home shortly thereafter! Scott Heth is the director of Audubon Sharon and can be reached at sheth@audubon.org, (subject line: Nature Notes).