Perches 101
Wednesday | 13 January 2010
The problem is that “Perches 101” was an entire year, so the story is already long at this point! If you check out Masterplan, you will see the many habitat breaks in the farm that run along the main road.
Our thinking with the spacing of these spots was that they would create a corridor from the southern uplands running the length of the farm to the north. These breaks would provide essential habitat for “beneficials,” the guys that create natural predator loops which in turn keeps the ecosystem functioning fully.
These are the kinds of analytical decisions you make when deciding how to organize a farm. Well, these are the kinds of decisions you make when you are organizing a Biodynamic® farm that you consider to be a living, breathing organism. It looked good on paper so it seemed like a good place to start!
The first year or two, we left the habitats tall with grass so that they had lots of food and cover for critters, bugs and birds. After two seasons of watching and waiting it became clear that the birds liked the bigger fields for nesting and the raptors liked the corridor of land over the ditch bank on the eastern border of the farm. Particularly, they like the knoll by Block D and the trees over the ditch adjacent to Block B.
As I was pondering this, it hit me what to do. Instead of providing a north-south corridor, these birds wanted an east-west corridor from the ditch to the river. The previous year, Martin had made a perch out of a small diameter snag in the forest. We asked him to make 5 more and then we placed them in the habitats around Blocks B, C and E.
Ostensibly, they provide a safe perch over the fields and between the forest and the river. I promise I am not lying about this next statement: it was less than 24 hours before a Cooper Hawk was using the perches! Now one year later, we have the Cooper’s Hawk, a pair of Red-tailed Hawks and a Sharp-shinned Hawk (I’m not positive on the identification of this one yet).
Read Perches 102...
– Barbara Steele
Read Perches 102...
