 So, baublelings are blackbirds. They're actually related to redwing blackbirds, to eastern metallarcs, to Baltimore Orioles. They are a charismatic and popular species while the female is built for camouflage and protection of the nest. The male is really striking in its coloration. They're black on the belly, yellow on the nape of the neck, and white on the wings and on the back. Because of this species' popularity and the fact that they're declining throughout their range, this has become a really great study species for our research program. The baubleling population has declined roughly 75 percent in the last 40 to 50 years. So there's really two factors that are really driving the decline of baubleling populations in the northeast, really throughout their range. So one of which has to do with the intensification of agricultural practices. The fact that we're cutting hay earlier in the season, we're also cutting it more frequently. Historically, when we began to farm the northeast, our farming was not that intensive. And so a lot of the hay cutting that we did occurred around the 4th of July, which was perfect for baublelings. Just enough time for them to get out of the nest before you've got any sort of disruption. And the other one is just the decline of the agricultural industry. What we are trying to understand with this project was really what would it take for farmers to basically incorporate grassland birds into their business model. And so in essence what that means for a farmer is that they're going to have to delay their cutting long enough for birds to successfully fledg young from their nest. So probably for these farmers they're going to have to go out and buy hay from someone else. One of the things that we're really interested in trying to understand here is this idea of whether or not people are willing to pay for certain goods and services that are essentially provided for free from nature. And so basically anyone can drive down a country road and see a baubleling. But the question is would you actually pay a landowner to actually conserve that. We learned that people love baublelings and people are willing to pay directly to farmers to have them delay their cutting so that baublelings can fledg young. So this year we went out and did surveys on all of these fields to try to get a handle for just how many baublelings were nesting in these sites. We counted 128 females and 157 males on these 340 acres. And the typical reproductive rate for birds that are nesting on these late cut fields, these high quality fields, is a little over 2 young per female. We probably raised at least 250 baublelings on these fields. So that's substantial when you start to get raising hundreds of birds. I think you can make a difference at least at the local level. One of the things that's really interesting is to think about this whole suite of species that baublelings can represent. And so we've got this group of grassland birds that are declining throughout their range. In Vermont we've got about 10 species that use this habitat. Everything from raptors like the Northern Harrier to rare sandpipers like the upland sandpiper. I think baublelings can be that flagship species that people get excited about that can also provide habitat conservation for a lot of other species as well.