 one towns in this area. We've conserved almost 7,000 acres now in our service area. And that's after 30 years of work as a member supported nonprofit. And it's been a great success. And in some ways, 7,000 acres is a lot. Then other ways, it's really not a lot at all. So that's why we offer, we try to offer programs like this to engage landowners and other folks interested in conservation who are interested in conserving their own lands, being good stewards of their own land and being in collaboration with the land trust and good stewardship and efforts for the future. So we're a resource for you. We hope to offer more programs like this, hopefully in person again in the future eventually, but also in Zoom perhaps in the coming months. Please be in touch with questions. If you have questions for me about the land trust, about conserving your land, about other succession planning or anything you might have, any question you might have. Two resources I did wanna mention. One is a book, again, the camera. It's called Your Woodland, a resource guide for Kenabek County landowners. Some of the other folks on this webinar had a hand in the production of this. And it's a great document that we're still distributing to landowners. That is a guide to everything about your woodland. A good starting point if you're thinking about stewardship, about succession planning, really about anything. So we have lots of copies and I'm happy to mail one to anyone who's interested in it. Another resource and just project that I think gives context to KLT's work. In addition to our local conservation, we also are the leaders of a statewide partnership called Local Woodworks that's seeking to promote the use of wood in sustainable building. We think that using local wood products is good for the environment, it's good for the economy, it's good for the community, it's good for the land. So you can check out localwoodworks.org, I'll put in the chat after, for more information about that project. That's a little different to the consumer side versus the landowner side, but an important piece in all of this work around forestry. So that's all I have at the end. Happy to take questions about KLT and I'll turn it back to Amanda. Thanks. Awesome, thank you so much. And again, as you've been doing, please feel free to type into the chat box if you have questions and thanks for sharing what you have, sorry, where you're from and how many acres you own. So without further ado, I'm excited to introduce Sally Stockwell. Oh, I should mention myself briefly. Amanda Behafi, deputy director of the Forest Stewards Guild and I'm down in Brunswick and today I'm the techie for the webinar. Thank you again for joining us. We're going to try to have our presenters speak for about 40, 45 minutes and we'll take most of the questions after the presentation concludes, but please feel free to type them in in the chat box in the meantime. So very excited to introduce to you Sally Stockwell from Maine Audubon and Andy Schultz Lander Outreach Forester for the Maine Forest Service. And you're welcome to turn off your cameras if you'd like. I will probably turn mine off, but I will be here listening. So Sally and Andy, take it away. Thanks Amanda. So I'm going to start out talking a little bit about what forestry for Maine birds is all about. This is a program that was first developed over in Vermont by the Vermont Parks, Recreation and Forestry Department and also Audubon, Vermont. And we have tailored that program for Maine, expanded it, tailored it for Maine. And so that's what we're going to be talking with you about today. Whoops. There we go. So why birds? Why are we talking about birds today? Well, we know from surveys that have been done across the nation that birds really manner to landowners in survey after survey, wildlife and birds come up in the top one to three reasons why they keep their woodlands, why they enjoy being out on their woodlands. And birds are great. It's easy to watch them. They're vibrant colors, they're beautiful songs. It's easy to get engaged with them. And then we also, so we use birds as sort of a hook to grab people's interest in what's out in their woodland. And if we provide good habitat for a wide variety of bird species, we know that we also provide great habitat for other wildlife. But these guys, how often do you get to see a lynx? How often do you get to see a Martin? If you're a really good angler, you might be able to catch a trout on your property, but these species are a lot harder to find. And so we use birds as a way to engage landowners, engage foresters and get them to think about the forest from a little bit different perspective than they might otherwise. And of course, the managing for wildlife is integrated with other goals you might have like recreation, hunting, fishing, aesthetics, that sort of thing. So again, why care about birds? We know from data that's been collected over the past 50 years as part of the breeding bird survey program that many of our bird species that occur here in Maine are declining dramatically. Here's an example of one, the Veeery. You can see here in 1970 compared to more recently in about 1916, I mean, 2016, that the population has declined dramatically, 40% I think in this case. And this is typical of many of our forest bird species. There was a research paper that came out last year in science that noted we've lost 30% of all of the birds that used to be here on the North American continent in 1970 compared with today. And there are many different factors that go into these declines, but one of them is what's happening on their breeding grounds. And now the reason why, and then we look at, well, why Maine? Well, if you look at this map of the United States, you'll see the dark red areas are the places that have the most number of forest bird species that show up in these breeding bird survey routes. These routes occur all across the United States and Maine consistently ranks with the highest number of species that you record on each one of these surveys. Another reason why Maine is really important is that as you can see from this map that National Audubon put together, Maine really jumps out as having the most extensive forest land left in all of the Eastern United States, all up and down what we call the Atlantic Flyway or the place where birds are moving from Southern to Northern States. And the area is so important that it's been designated as a globally significant important bird area. These are areas where there are multiple species, multiple individuals of those species that breed here. And if we were to lose that breeding habitat, we know that these species would plummet even further. There's about 90 different species that bird, songbirds that breed in Maine during the summer and they come from all over the place. We have some that are residents here all year long, but most of them come back either from the Southern United States, Central America or even Southern South America. And so why do they come here? Well, because we have lots of forest land, almost 18 million acres of forest land. We have many diverse forest types in Vermont where this program originated. They really focused on what's called the Northern Hardwood Forest because that's the dominant forest there. When we decided we wanted to bring the program here to Maine, we realized that wasn't gonna do it for us. We expanded the program to also include Northern softwoods, mixed woods and oak pine forests. So there's four major forest types that occur in Maine. And then in these forests, there's lots of insects which means lots of food for adults to feed their young. And they have very long days in which to collect all that food. I have a robin that's nesting literally right outside my bathroom window. And I've been watching it, been able to watch them first build the nest, then lay one egg a day for about seven days, incubate those eggs for two weeks and now they're feeding the young. And they are busy from 4.30 in the morning until 8.30 at night collecting food and bringing it back for those babies. So we initially started this program by developing a guide right here. Forestry for Maine birds, a guidebook for foresters, managing woodlets with birds in mind. We started targeting foresters because we figured if foresters can appreciate how to manage forests with birds in mind, then they can talk to the landowners they work with about how to do that. But then we expanded our approach and we developed a guidebook for landowners and also for loggers on, once I've lost my cursor for landowners and also for loggers about how to use this program as well. So the landowner guide is kind of a short version of the Forester Guide and the logger guide really focuses in on particular operational strategies they can use when they're out in the woods cutting the wood, bringing the wood back, things that they can do to help provide good habitat for these birds. And then we also have a number of fun outreach materials including this set of what we call trading cards that you can take out in the field with you and there's a photo and information about how to identify each of the 20 birds we're using as our priority conservation birds and then a little bit about the habitat that they use. So what is that? So now we come to the part where we have a little quiz for you. And here are our 20 birds that are our priority birds. We've tried to choose birds that are either easy to identify by sight and or sound and are representative of many other species that use different types of features within the forest. So for example, a woodpecker needs a dead standing snag to build their cavity nest in. Another bird might nest right on the floor of the forest. Another one might prefer being way up high in the tops of the trees. So Amanda, can you launch the poll? I'm having a moment of technical difficulty but it might pop up in a minute, sorry. Okay. So in every case, these birds represent species that are either in dramatic decline as you saw before. So they're of conservation concern for that reason. Or in the case of something like the blackthroated blue warbler, a large percentage of their global population breeds here in Maine. And so Maine is particularly important for sustaining that population. And then we have a few species that you'll only find them in these northern forests like blackback three-toed woodpeckers. And so it's kind of a combination of different reasons why these species are of conservation concern. But we also have species that are representative of other birds and other wildlife species that use the four types of forests, opine forest, northern hardwood, northern softwood and mixed wood. All right, do we have the poll or should I keep going? I think keep going for right now. All right. Each one of these birds uses different features and a different part of the forest. So as you can see here, Scarlet Tanager loves really big, tall oak trees. The Canada warbler prefers scrubby, short vegetation, often near water. The yellow-bellied sap sucker needs dead-standing trees for a cavity nest. Chestnut-sided warblers like openings in the forest, small openings in the forest or gaps where they prefer this younger vegetation, et cetera. Each one of these species uses a different part of the forest. So our goal with managing with birds in mind is to try to provide all of these different features in the forest across the landscape. And I like to think of the forest kind of as an apartment building. If you have a forest that just had, I mean an apartment building that just has two stories with two apartments on each story versus an apartment building that has 10 stories with five apartments on each story, you're gonna be able to pack a lot more people into that larger apartment. It's the same thing with the forest. The more features you have available at different places within the forest, the more species and the more individuals of each species you're gonna be able to pack into that forest. So in our guidebook, we have descriptions of these 20 different species, the photo, how to identify them, and a nice little graphic that shows where you typically find that bird. So in this case, again, they like these little gap openings here. And then on the side of the book, you can look quickly, it has a quick reference for which of the four forest types they prefer. So in this case, the Chestnut Side of War prefers the Northern hardwood and that's the dark orange there. And then we also look at, do they like older forests, intermediate age forest or young forest? And in this case, they prefer the younger forest. So there's plenty of information in the guidebook to help you learn each of these species. And this is one of my favorites, the Canada Warbler. Has this beautiful yellow breast with a dark black necklace on it. They're the ones that nest right on the ground in sort of shrubby areas near water. And why are we concerned about, so here's a graphic example of that. Mixed forest and then near water, they nest, or excuse me, you can find them often in this six to 30 foot area called the mid-story, but they nest right on the ground in the understory. And as you can see, their population has been declining dramatically since 1970. Here's another example. The yellow-bellied sap sucker, this is one of our species that is a resident, but they make holes in the trees all in lines along the tree and the sap fills those holes. And then they come back and eat either the sap or the insects that are attracted to that sap. And if you don't know much about woodpeckers, I'll tell you a couple of kind of fun facts. So all woodpeckers have these very stiff tail feathers so they can brace themselves against the trunk of the tree. And then you might wonder how they pound so hard against the tree without getting a headache. Well, they actually have fluid around their skull that keeps them from getting a concussion. And then when they're trying to get at the insects they're interested in, they have a tongue that wraps literally around their skull all the way back down here so that when they reach out for the insects it can go way inside the wood. And every woodpecker, just like every other songbird, has their own unique drumming. You can learn the different drumming and then you can learn to recognize the different species just by that. Let's try to play this and see if it works. No, not gonna work. Yeah, I think it only works on the phone because otherwise you have to change the audio settings. Oh, right, we didn't do that. Yeah, while you're getting the PowerPoint up we could actually launch the first poll. Right, because now it's not, now I'm stuck. Oh, goodie. Okay, let's launch the first poll. And we just are wondering how well you all know your forest birds. So stay tuned while we try to get Sally's PowerPoint unstuck, see how well you know your bird calls. Amanda, you want people to choose the birds they recognize or is that what you're saying? Yeah, if you recognize a bird call or, yeah, it's just a fun poll. So if you recognize a bird call or if it's a bird call that you wanna learn either way you can check the box and we'll see. And you might not know the bird but maybe you recognize the call. Like if you've heard somebody go, quick three beers or if you've heard, please, please, please, Dmitra or if we have a Zuzi, Zuzi, Zuzi or we have teacher, teacher, teacher. And we also have Pee Wee. All right, so I think we can stop, we can probably stop sharing the poll. So done filling it out and then we'll, let's share results from the poll. That's good, you guys know a lot of your birds. So we have, please, please, please to meet you would be our Chest and Side of Warbler, teacher, teacher, teacher is Ovenbird. Pee Wee is just like they sound. The Pee Wee, Zuzi, Zuzi, Zuzi is our friendly black-throated green warbler and quick three beers are outside of Flight Catcher. So good job, guys. And those are some of our priority species. Yay, all right, thank you. All right, so can you see my screen again? I'm back. We can, yeah, let's maybe not mess with the calls unfortunately. Yeah, I won't try that again. So we'll go down to the next. Again, nice graphic example of the type of habitat that yellow-bellied sapsuckers prefer. They often like younger stands of aspen, poplar, those soft hardwoods where they can easily carve out a nice cavity for their nest and find their food. And their populations have actually gone down, but then are coming back up more recently. So that's good news. And then our woodthrush is another species that's declining dramatically. All of our thrushes, we have woodthrush, hermitthrush, veeries are those flute, they have that flute-like song that carries through the woods. When you're walking through the woods, they're one of the few species that sings both in the early morning and also in the evening. And they have a special larynx that allows that flute one of their larynx. So thank you. That allows them to produce two notes at the same time. So it has this harmonic sound to it. There they are. And they like northern hardwoods and they are often found in this mid-story section here, both in terms of where you might see the bird singing from and then also where they build their nest. And they like a pretty good overstory, healthy overstory that shades and covers that mid-story. And then they'll feed right on the ground. They'll try to find insects that are hidden underneath the leaf litter. They also have had a dramatic drop in their populations all across the Eastern US. And one of the primary reasons is because of habitat fragmentation. So they're one of the species that we call area-sensitive species or species that prefers the interior part of the forest. They do best when they have at least 250 acres of forest and even better when they have around 2,500 acres of forest around that 250 acres. So, and the better the habitat quality, the smaller the home range needs to be for each territorial pair and the more pairs you can pack into that space. And the shape of those blocks of forest land matters too. So in this case, these two shapes are the same total area. But in this case, there's far less, far more interior forest habitat than in this shape. So now we're gonna hear from Andy about how you would put together a management plan that takes these concerns into place. And Sally, do you want the poll? I don't know if you can launch the poll first? Yes, I think we can do that. So in the next poll, it's pretty quick. We're just kind of wondering how important is enhancing habitat for birds to you? Kind of on a scale of one to five, how interested are you in enhancing forest bird habitat? Got lots of people who are already helping birds. That's great. And we can help you figure out how to do more. And then another group of folks who are interested but don't really know how to help. So you're in the right place. Thanks for coming. Andy, take it away. Hey, so Andy's having a little bit of technical difficulties. So he'll be signing back in momentarily. Sorry about that. But yeah, let me see. Actually, Sally, if you wanna just kind of get us started on the landowner objectives, I will see if I can get Andy the phone number, but he really will be back in just a moment. Gotta love Zoom. All right, so as part of the guide for foresters in the guidebook, we have outlined a trail, the Forestry for Main Birds trail map that you can follow to figure out how to manage your wood lot with birds and other wildlife in mind. And it starts by identifying your objectives and goals. Maybe birds and wildlife are part of your goals, but maybe you have some other goals too, whether it's recreation or timber management or whatever it might be. So then you start with your goals and then go out into the forest and take a look around and see whether or not the habitat that's there right now provides the features that we're looking for to enhance in terms of supporting these different bird species. And we'll talk a little bit more about what those are in a minute. After you've considered your current habitat conditions, you might need to go back and revise your objectives and goals and take that into consideration. And from there, you can work with a professional forester to start drafting a management plan that addresses the particular goals you have for your property, whether it's private, leoned or land trust property. And then take that management plan and figure out how are you gonna implement it? What are your actions in terms of harvesting or civil cultural options? So as Amanda likes to say, civil culture is the art and science of managing trees, managing the forest. And so it's a little bit of art, a little bit of science and then you put that all together and figure out what do I wanna do next? All right. And the professional forester can help you with that. Yeah, Andy is jumping back in shortly. I can talk about this next slide while I wait for him to return if you'd like, Sally. Yes, go ahead. All right. So part of the, and thanks for covering for the last slide. Sounds like you heard this presentation earlier today. So one of the features that you'd wanna have in your forest management plan is a stand map. And as you can see from this one, each stand, kind of each unit of forest that has similar trees, similar species, similar spacing, similar age, similar management history of trees is delineated with one of those numbers, five A, five B, six, et cetera. So from a bird's perspective, the birds are looking into some of those habitat differences and distinctions that you might see between stands. The birds are looking at what's going on in the stand, like if you go for a walk in the woods, they're looking at what happens on the property overall, but they're also looking at the landscape scale. And I think Sally could tell you a little bit more about the landscape scale as well. We good to go on now? I'm still looking for Andy. I can actually, it might be better if you did this just so I can keep an eye out for him again. All right, so we have this great little tool that we use with people during our workshops and where we ask you to take your six fingers, and you can do this right now while I'm talking, you can take three fingers on your left hand, three fingers on your right hand, and those are representative of different features in the forest that we're gonna see if we can find. So starting with the left hand, we're gonna be talking about live things. And the upper finger would be your overstory, that's from 30 feet and above. Your middle finger is gonna be the mid-story, which is from 30 feet down to six feet, and the understory is gonna be about our height, less than six feet. And then, so then you're gonna spin around in a circle and you're gonna look at, you're gonna look at what do you see? Do you see a lot of vegetation, a moderate amount, or very little in each of those three layers? Then we're gonna turn around and look at things that used to be alive, but are no longer alive in deadwood, which is super important. And for deadwood, we're gonna start by looking at snags, dead-standing trees. Those are the trees that woodpeckers will use. The downed woody material, or large trees that have fallen down on the forest floor, and provide surface for something like a rough grouse to drum on, or fine woody material, piles of fine twigs and tops of trees that birds can hide in, and also look for insects that are captured in that area. So here's another way of looking at that. If you wanna expand beyond those first six fingers, you can actually add your other four, and include gaps, which we've already talked a little bit about, the importance of those, water, tree size. Do you have some big trees with big crowns, or do you have just lots of thin, sort of spindly trees, and then also leaf litter? And we'll go through each of these in more detail, right? All right, now, this is sort of another graphic example of some of those different features. So first we're looking for, well, let me back up. So this is a forest that could use some improvement in terms of providing habitat features for different birds. And so we might wanna try to promote more vigorous canopy trees for species like the scarlet tanager. We might want some to include a little canopy gap, so we've got species like peewees and all-of-sighted fly catchers. We might wanna make sure that we have a denser mid-story. So are there younger trees that are coming up in that mid-story for our thrushes, specifically the woodthrush? Do we have cavity trees for yellow-bellied sap suckers and other woodpeckers? Do we have a dense understory? In this case, clearly not, right? Well, you're not gonna get something like a black-throated blue warbler that likes that understory, in particular, is partial to hobblebush. And is there enough ground cover for an oven bird to build its nest? Is there enough downwood for a rough grouse to come in and drum and attract its mate? Those are some of the things you wanna look for. Are they already there in your forest, or do you need to manage your forest in a way to promote more of these? So if we look at it in a little more detail, first thing you wanna do when you go out and do this habitat assessment is identify- Someone down here. Oh, there you go. Take it away. Well, thanks, Sally. Any questions? Yeah. Was there anything in the past few slides? My apologies. My computer just decided to crash and it took quite a while to get back, but I'm back. Was there anything, Sally, that you wanted me to go over from a foresters point of view in some of those slides? The landowner objectives, perhaps how that fits in the forest management plans. Anything like that? What do you think, Amanda? I think we covered it or? I think we covered it pretty well, but maybe during the Q&A, Andy can describe a little bit in greater detail how you actually find a forester from the main forest service or a consulting forester. So maybe we'll save that till after the presentation. All right, great. So I'll just pick it up from here. So as you- Sounds good. You can see in the pictures, and I apologize for being a little dark here. The lighting crew was busy disinfecting things. So they weren't able to get the lights right. But at any rate, you'll notice that this is fairly typical forest scene for a lot of what we have in our area. You notice those, the initials up above. And Sally, I think you would refer to this earlier as our kind of broad forest typing here in Maine. We have OP, which is Oak Pine. And actually a lot of the windthrip and Southern and coastal Maine falls into that category. We have Northern softwoods, which is as indicated to the North or up slope, more spruces, furs, hemlocks, Northern hardwood, which is very typical of a lot of Maine. And I would say this picture looks to me a lot like the Northern hardwood stand. And then you have your mixed wood stands. Typically we have a hemlock or spruce mixing in with some of those Northern hardwood species. So this is just one broad way of describing the type of forest that you have to work with as you're kind of assessing what you have to work with. Maybe move on. Next slide. Okay, you've seen some of these schematics before. We're kind of going over them again and helping to define some terminology. And again, I think Sally mentioned it, but we have the understory, which is basically the first six feet above the ground from a forest or standpoint where we often refer to this as regeneration or reproduction. And there are species that prefer or need that, such as the oven bird, the chestnut-sided warbler, morning warbler, American woodcock. A lot of people may be familiar with creating the understory. Another first term for that is early successional habitat. And then in the mid-story, we're talking the six to 30 foot range. So roughly three-story building to get back to Sally's apartment analogy. We're talking about, well, yeah, three-story building. So there's quite a few residents that can fit into that area. They may not all live there all the time, but they may nest there, they may feed there, they may use it for cover. And then the rest of the forest looking up is greater than 30 foot that we refer to as the overstory. A lot of main trees fall at their height when they're dominant in the canopy are gonna be in 30 to 60, 70, maybe 80 feet, that range. And then we do have our somewhat super canopy tree, white pine, which can actually extend over a hundred feet. Sticks his head up out of that canopy sometimes. And you'll see here listed some of the other birds that you'll find in those different areas. Scarlet tanagers, they're really bright. They're easy to see except for the fact that they're usually at the tops of the trees. So if you have eyes like me, they're not easy to see without binoculars. Anyway, so the two ways of looking at this is what kind of birds need what forest structure or forest of elements. And the other one is if you have these elements, what kind of birds might you expect to see or hear? So it works both ways. Now of those three vegetation layers, the understory, midstory and overstory, we sort of wanna give them a score so to speak or rating whether there's a lot of vegetation in that layer or not. And you'll see on the left hand side of this column, sort of the non-numerical, the more generic, little or none or very low with less than 5% coverage there. The low five to 30% coverage, medium 30 to 70, and anything greater than a 70% coverage or in foresters terms, we would call that crown closure. And we do this outside in the woods. We do it when leaves are off. We ask folks to imagine if the leaves were out because that's really when the birds are here, it's usually coincides with leaf on. And for them, what's important is how closed is the forest in these different layers? So you see the diagram drawings there. I know of at least one ringer in the audience, Kevin who would understand if I mentioned using a densiometer to measure these in very technical ways. But for most folks, it's enough to come up with that very low, low, medium, or high to move. Okay. Another thing to consider is the correlation between age and size of the trees. Birds don't really see age. They see size, but there's a definite relation there. You know, those smaller diameter trees and not so tall are generally, well, we call them seedlings or saplings. Generally, they're young or at least younger. Sometimes you can get fooled by certain species that grow in the understory for many, many years without getting big, but in general, younger trees are the smaller trees. You get into the intermediate age classes, then you start to have what foresters referred to as pole timber. You may have two age stands, two levels with some pole timber and then some overstory over that. And you see some of the details about how that can relate to diameters. By the way, if it hasn't been mentioned already, that DBH refers to diameter at breast height, find at 45, sorry, four and a half feet above the ground. I think there's a picture that will come up to demonstrate that a little bit later. These are the types of things that your forester can do for you when they're doing this assessment. It might be part of a forest management plan. It might be a separate activity to give you an idea of what kind of bird habitat you have. And of course, not to forget the older forests, maturing the small to larger saw timber. And the saw timber size does relate to its ability to be sold for saw logs, but there are larger trees that aren't very good for lumber, but they still are saw timber. They're in that older, more mature range and definitely have certain birds that need them for various reasons. I guess we don't want, there we go. That's our very own Sally Stockwell measuring a tree. Measuring the diameter of a tree at about four and a half feet above the ground to get that DBH. Remember diameter is that measurement as if you were measuring straight through the tree, even though you're wrapping a tape around the circumference of the tree. So when you see references to DBH and size ranges, just know that that's the diameter, not the circumference. These larger trees, mature trees that you find in a later successional stand. And by that we mean a stand that has been around long enough for trees to get big. Another typical thing there is that some of those trees got big and fell over and died. And so they've contributed to that woody material element that I think was already covered in a slide or two. And of course we like to say that more is more and bigger is bigger and it's great to have those large trees both standing and on the ground. From a bird's point of view anyway. Andy, I think for the next slides we're gonna wanna move maybe a little more quickly just kind of highlighting some of these habitat features that we would look for in managing our forests with birds in mind. Okay, so the gaps you see here, there's a gap in the canopy. Obviously let some more light down on the ground. And you can see by the young pine trees coming in that an understory is getting established in part due to that gap. Gaps typically are certainly less than two acres and it may be more like a quarter acre or even a tenth of an acre. So they're not really clear cuts. But they are patch openings and for birds purposes we call them gaps, okay? Here's the standing deadwood. I think we've kind of covered why that's important. This Piliated Woodpecker is showing off exactly why she thinks it's important, all right? Rough grouse like that material on the ground those are their drumming logs, it gets them up so they can project that sound I guess so they can be heard, nice. And some of the additional wildlife that will use these same habitat elements. Here's a fisher, I believe it's a fisher, yes? Yes. Not being that good at telling the difference. But yes, fisher love to have that large material that allows them to run through the forest without being on the ground. It gives them I think some quicker ways of moving around a little better view of their surroundings and they just prefer it. So when you manage for birds you're also managing for other species as well. And of course the infamous oven bird, the teacher, teacher, teacher or the pizza, pizza, pizza call that some of us like call it an oven bird because its nest looks like a little oven and it's found down on the ground. So not only is it important to have an understory it's important to have that leaf litter there so that birds like oven birds can make their nests. Here's a situation where some non-native biodiversity is working against habitat. The upper right you see an emerald, sorry an Asian longhorn beetle, not yet identified in Maine, but it's not far away. It's probably here. That's not a good thing. Lower left is a spruce bud worm. That's actually native biodiversity. And every once in a while when those populations get up they're not great for spruce and fir trees particularly for fir trees. There is a bird that loves them though. I think is that the morning warbler? Cape May warbler and Bay breasted warbler, black pole warblers there when there are more spruce bud worms out there there are more of those birds. They respond very quickly. Okay, so that's why we like having those birds around because the quicker they get rid of the bud worms the better off our fir trees are. And then the picture in the middle shows the effects of non-native earthworms that are decomposing that leaf litter so quickly that it's actually exposing roots. And as we saw in the earlier slide that's not good for birds that need that leaf litter. And the riparian areas are always important. They provide obviously the water typically areas around riparian areas are specific habitats for a variety of critters. And riparian areas work very well as corridors connecting areas throughout the woods so that the animals can move as they need to. So is that quick enough Amanda? That was great. And I think Sally's got the next few slides. Okay. Yep, just a few more to go folks. We're almost done. And please have your questions ready. So the other thing you want to think about as Amanda mentioned earlier, when you're out walking your wood lot first you want to think about where are the different stands of trees and then think about how those different stands relate on the property. And then you also want to think about what's around you. If you have a relatively young forest are there older forests nearby? If you have a relatively older forest are there younger forests nearby? And through the forestry for main birds program we're really focused a little bit more on trying to promote more of this older and mature forest stands. Right now so an ideal relationship would be 10 to 20% of the landscape in young forest, 20 to 40% in intermediate, 40 to 50% in older including at least 10% in this very mature stand size. Right now across the state there's approximately two to four, maybe 6% of the landscape in this older category. So we have a long ways to go. And this program is designed to help us get there. We also have a need for young forests in certain areas but there are other programs that are promoting early successional forest. We appreciate the gaps within the older forest that attract some of the species that like that younger forest but we're not specifically targeting younger forest. So here's an example of when youth are looking at your property, how does that fit in with what's happening around you? And we encourage you if you decide to work with this program and work with a forester to have your forester look at what's this around if your property is right here, what's the surrounding area look like and then try to balance out what you decide to do on your property relative to what's happening around you. And just as a sort of summary again, we're trying to promote these diverse mature forestings. You can see here, we have three good layers of vegetation. So lots of apartment buildings there. You got little gaps in the forest that mimic natural disturbances where as Andy mentioned, big old trees fall down, take a couple other trees down with them, provide openings in the forest. Some of these older trees are decaying and they provide great nesting habitat for piliate woodpeckers and other woodpeckers. And then we've got examples of this wonderful down woody material, both large and small and the importance of water riparian areas. So lots to think about and wanna put in another plug for the importance of riparian areas. We have a lot of species, 85% of our vertebrate species use these riparian areas. Those are areas alongside water, whether it's a stream, a wetland or a pond. And of course, having shade over these streams is really important for our native brook trout because they are, excuse me, a cold water fish that there's more oxygen in colder water and that's what they need. And then species like mink can be found in the water but there are lots of other species that use the area around the water itself as far as 1,1100 feet away. So we encourage you to pay particular attention to how you manage that area. And the other thing is when you're thinking about landscape, think about how your property is connected with other properties. And I know this is something that many land trusts including the Kennebec land trusts are working hard on. So this is a map from the beginning of habitat program that has provided information about where connections are likely to occur for different wildlife species between forest patches. So from this forest patch across the road here to this forest patch, that's an important habitat crossing to keep. Likewise, over here, this is a connection between a couple of wetlands. That's another pathway that's important to keep if you can. And finally, we've been working with forest landowners not just on what's happening on the land but what's happening in the water as well. And we have a lot of old poorly functioning culverts across the state that are impeding movement of fish up and down the stream and other animals up and down the stream. So we've been working with a program called StreamSmart that works with landowners, municipalities, land trusts to replace these poorly functioning culverts with these nice big culverts up. That's the stream. And so that is the end of our slides. If you would like more information, we have lots of other resources at our website, maynotabond.org, FFMB for forestry for maimbirds. And we encourage you to check that out. And so before we wrap up, we would like to ask a final question about what resonated for you most from the presentation. And then we're happy to stay as long as folks like for questions and answers. Yay, all right. Thank you, Sally. Thank you, Andy. So we should be getting that final poll launched and you're welcome to answer kind of what resonates with you in that final question. And also if you have questions, please feel free to type them into the chat box. While you're doing that, Andy, I'm wondering if I can ask you to tell folks about how they can get in touch with a forester. Certainly. As part of my day job, I work for the Maine Forest Service. And one of the things I do is help connect people with licensed foresters. The Maine Forest Service has a, well, to begin with, we have foresters on staff that we call district foresters that are available to meet with landowners, take a walk in their woods, answer questions, make suggestions. And ultimately at the end of the day, depending on how the conversation goes, they might refer them to private consultants. When it comes down to getting services such as getting a forest management plan, overseeing a harvest, maybe doing a wildlife or habitat assessment, improving BMPs, these are all things that a forester can help a landowner with. We have on our website a referral list statewide of approximately 150 consulting foresters. We also have a map on our website so that you can look at the area where your woods are and see the business locations of those 150 or so foresters to help it narrow down geographically for folks that work in your part of the state. And of course you can always call or email me directly. And I can talk with you about where your lot is, what specifically you're looking for and either direct you to your local district forester or help you with that referral to the private consultants. We work closely with a lot of these consultants to get management plans. And in fact, we offer a little bit of financial assistance for a certain kind of a forest management plan that is referred to as a Woodland resource action plan. So just be aware of that if you're at that stage of that particular step when it comes to your stewardship of your woods where you wanna get a plan written down or maybe you have an old plan but it doesn't have a lot of detail in it. We can help you get a plan that will give you a little more information and hopefully help you take those next steps after that. Great, thanks, Andy. We have a question that came in. I think we can probably close the poll now. And as we get ready to share the results we had a question, Maine Audubon Society recommends planting eastern hemlock good for caterpillars and birds. But what about the willy-a-delgid? Is there a resistant hemlock? Andy, do you wanna take that one? So I'm not aware of a resistant hemlock. There may eventually be some checks and balances on the hemlock willy-a-delgid but probably not nothing anytime soon. I believe there are places where they've tried some bio-controls but again, it's not something that's going to be there in the near term. In general, we don't, or I don't recommend planting a lot of trees unless it's a tree that's not there that you want to have. Hemlock is quite prolific in a lot of parts of the state. So I'm not sure why you would need to plant it. You might just want to manage to keep some of it, particularly if you're not in that zone where willy-a-delgid is heavy. There's a place on our website too which I could direct anybody to if necessary showing the quarantine area for the movement of hemlock products that is generally to the south and along the coast. And probably that's not a good place to be even thinking about planting hemlock because you wouldn't be able to bring in nursery stock from out of state again, because of the quarantine. Andy, we actually have another forest health question. Someone asks, I have many mature beach trees on my forest that have beach bark disease and a few that don't. Also, I have an understory of many small beaches. Should I cut the small beaches, the ones that dominate the understory? Well, like most forestry questions, the answer is it depends. About the overstory ones, I would say I might be cutting the diseased beach, but do not cut the ones that are not showing disease. There's a high chance that they are resistant to the beach bark disease. And of course, beach is good for so many species. It doesn't show up a lot when you're talking about birds, but certainly for a lot of mammals, it's pretty important. And I'm sure there's birds that use it as well. A lot of that understory is likely to be root suckers or sprouting from the roots of larger trees. So just cutting those may prove frustrating because they'll probably sprout back. But the question that comes up is, is there something else that is growing there? And if you can cut back some of those, that understory, just enough to let something else take it over or take over that growing space, you may be okay. Beach is kind of a fact of life and it's a really good species when it's not diseased. So I hate to say, try to do everything you can to eradicate it. I know there's plenty of forest landowners that do everything they can to eradicate it, but it's not a one-size-fits-all as far as that goes. Yeah. So my clock just turned over to 4.30. I recognize that a number of people might want to jump off and go enjoy the afternoon. So please join me in a virtual round of applause for our presenters. And they are, I think, available to stick around for a few more minutes and answer your questions. So thanks everybody for joining us. And if you need to go, I understand, but if you have questions, please feel free to type them into the chat box. And I wonder if we can maybe share the poll results and just see what ideas stuck with folks. And again, thanks everybody for joining. Let's see, where did those go? I just minimize them and I don't know where they are now, poll. Here we go. All right, and again, folks, please feel free to type questions into the chat box for our presenters if you have more questions. Yeah, so it looks like the top two things that resonated mostly for people were understanding that Maine is an internationally significant baby bird factory, which is great. It is truly a unique situation here in Maine. And then the importance of all those apartments, providing lots of apartments for lots of different birds. And not too far behind that, that each species uses a different part of the forest. That is something that regularly comes up in our workshops where that's sort of a revelation for people just had never really thought about it before. And I can't tell you how many foresters we've worked with that at the end of the workshop say, geez, I'm never gonna look at the forest the same anymore. All right, thanks. I don't see any more questions in the chat box. If someone has a question and you feel more comfortable asking it out loud, you're welcome to unmute your line and ask it out loud. And I do recognize we're a little bit after our planned time. So if you do need to jump off, that's all right. And Kirsten says, thank you all for joining us. Yeah, I'm just wondering, will our contact information be made available to the participants? Or is that something we should put in the chat box so that it will be available? I have everyone's email who participated so I can follow up and share the resources and the contact info. Yeah, definitely. It'd be great. Yeah, I think that would be good. People are gonna think of stuff afterwards, possibly. Yeah, and they can always contact their district forester and go for a walk in the woods and learn more about managing your forest with birds in mind. The booklets, how do we get the booklets that you showed at the beginning? Oh, sure, yeah, your Woodland booklet. I can, I'll get your mailing address from you. I'll shoot you a note and I can mail some out to you. Okay. Yeah, thanks for asking. It's called for Kennebec County Landowners but it's applicable for the whole state, for sure. Okay. Yeah, and we have another fun sort of guide for landowners that I'll send Kristen the link to and she can send that out to folks as well. Great. Awesome. All right, well, thanks everybody so much. I'll help spread the word, folks. If you've enjoyed what you've heard, spread the word, we're gonna be able to post the recorded webinar for others to watch in the future and we encourage you to talk to your neighbors, talk to your district forester, talk to your consulting forester and see what you can do. I'd say stay tuned for future workshops where we actually get to go outside. Yes.