 So welcome everyone to this session. Thanks to Maine Audubon and Sally Stockwell and Andy Schultz. This session is about forestry for Maine birds. This is always a popular topic. We've had these sessions at the conference and stand alone outside of the conference always very, very popular. So thank you guys so much for being here today and doing this via zoom for us. We have a big group of people signed up to join us today and so we are asking everyone to keep your video off, as well as of course keeping yourself on mute. Questions today will ask you to put those in the chat if you have questions while Sally and Andy are presenting. If it seems like a critical question like a clarification, I'll pop in and ask for those answers while they're going but otherwise we'll try to hold questions for after their presentations. Um, what else did I want to say I wanted to say I've known Sally a long time and my my earliest memory of Sally is the very first conference workshop that I coordinated was a session on vernal pools with Sally. It was awesome and it really it was a great start for me. It was so easy to do with you Sally and it gave me confidence to go forward and do a lot of other conference sessions so thank you for that. And with that I think I will turn it over to you guys thank you so much. All right, well thank you Donna and it's been a pleasure to work with you all these years to do it a fabulous job. And I welcome everybody on the zoom meeting today it's really great to see such enthusiasm for our program and we're really excited to talk about forestry forest our forestry for Maine birds program but also a little bit about what's happening with birds declining birds and climate change how does climate change figure in here, and kind of big picture so I'm going to start off by doing kind of an overview to what's special about our wildlife here in Maine, especially for those folks who are not from the state you might be interested in this and then I'm going to turn it over to Andy Schultz who is our outreach forester with the main forest service and a partner on this project. He's going to run through a bunch of slides that specifically have to do with the forestry for Maine birds program. And then I'm going to wrap up with some summary slides and then we'll open it up for for questions and conversation. So let me share my screen. Can you see. We can see it Sally but it's improved. There we go I think it's popping up now. Yeah, but that's not the first slide slide. Sorry, I'm going to have to go back up. I clicked on the first slide but it didn't pop up when I started so. There we go. There we go thank you. Are you are you seeing the full screen. Yes, we are. Looks beautiful. Very good. Thank you. All right, so as I mentioned, Andy and I are going to team up to do this presentation for you and we're going to be talking about forestry for Maine birds but also a little bit about climate change wildlife and forest management. I'm going to start by just noting that Maine wildlife and habitat is really special. And one of the reasons it's so special is because Maine is an ecological transition zone. If you go from the southern part of Maine to the northern part of Maine, we cross over as many different ecological zones as occurs from Central Europe to the very northern part of Europe. So if you complete compare the climate gradient. That's just three degrees of latitude in Maine corresponds with over 20 degrees of latitude in Europe. That distance is about twice the length of California. So we have a lot of variety packed in to a relatively small space. And as a result, we have quite an array of different wildlife species that live and make their home here in Maine everything from 33,000 invertebrates to 23 reptiles and over 400 different bird species. And then in addition to those more commonly known species we have lots of plants and phytoplankton fungi macro fights. And, and so our job here is to try to create great habitat for all these different species. In Maine sits at a very important place in the broader landscape. So you'll note this, this is a slide that they came from the wildlife conservation society where they were looking at what we call the human footprint, and this is a relative example of how much human disturbance there is on the landscape and you'll see the lightest colors here represent the least amount of human imprint. So much of Maine, more for those of you who are familiar with the northern north woods and also much of down East Maine. There's, there's relatively little human activity in those areas. And this is kind of unique in most of the eastern United States, and also the blue arrows designate some really important travel corridors that exist between the other New England states and Maine and then Maine and Quebec and New Brunswick. So those are important corridors for wildlife and plants to be moving back and forth across the landscape. The way to look at the uniqueness of Maine is from outer space. And if you look at the number of lights that you can see from the outer atmosphere, Maine really stands out as having that very large dark hole, where there are very few lights and in fact, just recently the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument was designated as an official dark sky location. There are only a few of them in the United States, and Maine has is now in that in that family. So there are other places further west, you know that share that kind of dark sky but very few places in the east, other than Maine. And that means that we have a unique set of wildlife in the state. We are the only state in the east that still has a full complement of all these different predators, everything from weasels to foxes to links to coyotes and and the reason we have all of these different species is because there's enough habitat for them a lot of these species move around quite a bit they use. Bobcats for example, each bobcat needs about 6000 acres of land for their home range. So a lot of these, these animals are moving across the landscape, they need to move to find places to nest or, or den places to feed places to hide from other predators and so they that we have a lot of that habitat available here for these species. We also have the last stronghold in the US for the eastern brook trout, all of those green areas mark relatively intact watersheds and stream systems, where we still have wild brook trout that are doing well, and that is unlike anywhere else in the eastern United States. We have over 50% of the nation's remaining wild population, about 97% of all the lake and pond populations, and our streams, the most percentage of intact streams of anywhere in the eastern US. Again, this is a reflection of relatively low human imprint on the area. So now getting to birds, we also have about 90 different bird species that breed in our forest here in Maine. And this is a great map that was put together by National Audubon where they, it's a few years old now but where they looked at where the last remaining blocks of forest in the eastern US along the Atlantic area and what jumps out immediately here right, you know that big green area in Maine is the largest single area in all of the eastern US. And because of that because of the importance of this area, the National Audubon and the Bird Conservation Society designated this large area in northwestern Maine as a globally significant important bird area. The bird areas are areas where there are either large concentrations of one or two species, or large concentrations of many different species. And in this case, it's the large concentration of many different species that come here to breed in Maine every year. So let's talk a little bit now about current and future wildlife trends. In 2019, the Canadians came out with this wonderful report called the State of Canada's Birds. And if you look at the graph on the right there, you'll see that they have divided up, or they've looked at different groups of birds and what's been happening to those birds over the past 4050 years. There are success stories here. If you look at the top two lines, you'll see that both waterfowl and raptors have actually increased their population since the 1970s. This is largely due to two reasons. In the case of raptors, it's because we ban DDT. And so things like bald eagles and osprey have been able to recover. And in the case of waterfowl, it's because there have been active groups like Ducks Unlimited and others who have really focused on protecting the nesting habitat of these species. But most of the other species groups are either holding steady or slightly declining or declining dramatically. And if you look at those groups that are declining dramatically, the biggest problem is with our aerial insectivores. These are birds that feed on insects while they're flying through the air. But, and not far behind that are shorebirds and grassland birds, and then our forest birds are sort of doing okay. But this is Canada, right? So the picture looks a little bit different in the United States, similar but a little bit different. There was a study that came out in 2019 in science that looked at 50 years of breeding bird survey data and then a lot of other long-term data sets. There were, I think, 13 different data sets that they looked at. And based on an analysis of all of that data, they were able to determine that between 1970 and 2017, we've lost nearly a third of our birds. So three billion birds that have are no longer around compared with previous numbers. That's a huge decline. Many of us who have spent time out in the field, whether it just as an amateur bird watcher or a professional working in this field have noticed this decline in numbers over the years. And seeing this report come out just really unfortunately solidified the feeling among many of us that they're just hot as many birds as there used to be. And it's true. When we look at the different groups and how that declines are happening, we'll see in the case of, this is across North America, grassland birds have declined the most. What we're focused on here today are primarily our boreal birds, forest birds and our eastern forest birds. And although those declines are not as dramatic as grassland birds, you're still seeing a 33% decline in our boreal forest birds. These are birds that tend to nest at the northern part of Maine and up into Canada. And then, you know, 17% decline in our eastern forest birds, which is all the birds along the eastern Atlantic flyway. One of the reasons we think this is happening is because we're also seeing some dramatic insect declines. And many of our birds, particularly birds right now that are nesting and raising young feed on caterpillars. And those are a super important protein pill for their young birds. We have other flying insects that our aerial insectivores feed on and probably many of you have Phoebe's in your yards right now, you know, they're out collecting insects. And so, we don't know for sure what the situation here in Maine is, but we do know from studies that have been done elsewhere that there are dramatic insect declines. There was a study that looked at flying insects in protected areas in Germany over 27 year time period and they saw a 75% decline in the number of insects. Likewise, in our similar problem is in Puerto Rico, they've been able to document challenges between when the insects are coming out, and when the animals that are feeding on those insects are also trying to feed on those. And so this asynchronous situation has caused problems in a number of cases. So let's take a little bit deeper dive into our forest birds. In eastern forest birds, we've seen a 17% overall decline in numbers, but also those declines have happened in at least 64% of the different species that are breeding in our forest. And that translates to a loss of 167 million birds you can't even really get your head around what that number means. Right. Our boreal forest birds, we've seen this 33% decline. Over 50%, 50% of species are showing that decline. And we're talking about a loss of over 500 million birds. So to put that in a little bit different context, this means that one out of every four of our eastern forest birds, and one out of every of our boreal forest birds that used to be here in the 1970s coloring our forests with their flashy feathers and cheerful songs are no longer with us. That's a big loss. They're still here, but there's just not as many of them. So let's take a little look at some of these boreal birds that are that do nest here in Maine. This is just sort of a snapshot to show you what these birds look like we have black pole warblers Bay breasted warblers rusty blackbirds rusty blackbirds have seen about a 90% decline in their populations in the last 10 to 15 years. Big Nails thrush are a species of special concern because there are very few of them they nest in our subalpine areas, boreal chickadees spruce grouse are some other examples of our boreal birds. And there are people from all around the country and beyond who come to Maine specifically to hunt down and see these boreal birds. So another study that was done a number of years ago was by National Audubon. They produced this report called survival by degrees where they looked at bird species across North America, and how climate change might affect their populations going forward. They used a fancy model that incorporated habitat values temperatures where you currently find these animal different species, and then where they might show up under different scenarios of warming. And I'm showing you here, just a sample, they have all of this information is on their website you can go and plug in Maine or whatever region you might be interested in, and you have an option of looking at what's likely to happen under different warming scenarios, a 1.5 degree Celsius warming, two degrees Celsius warming, or three degrees Celsius warming. So what I've shown here, as an example is for the Atlantic flyway. There are under a two degree Celsius warming scenario. There's proposing they're suggesting that about 166 species are vulnerable to varying degrees from high vulnerable, the moderately vulnerable to low vulnerability, compared with about 108 that will be relatively stable. So look at what that means for Maine. Well, they're also predicting big changes for Maine so during the summer breeding season at a two degree Celsius warming situation. We've got about nine different species that they're saying are highly vulnerable 75 moderately vulnerable 46 low vulnerable 57 stable. So we've got, you know, over twice as many species that are likely to see shifts in their range or declines in their population as a result of climate change. We don't know exactly how this is going to play out, but these are some predictions. And if we delve into that a little bit deeper. Here are some predicted range shifts for several different species the palm warmer, which is a highly vulnerable species. They're predicting that the range in Maine will essentially disappear. That's what this red color means. And then for the scarlet tannager, they're predicting that the range will be somewhat maintained, but in cases where it might be shifting a little bit. The green are areas where it'll be improving slightly the yellow areas where it's either stable or worsening. And so we might see some shifts from north to south there. Red eyed virial low vulnerability. It's probably going to still be around pretty much everywhere where we have it today. Here's an example of a woodthrush range prediction to shift from the current range being all throughout the eastern US to 1.5 degree scenario where the red areas are starting to lose their habitat. The blue areas are places where they're starting to gain habitat. And then under three degree Celsius warming, you'll see even more shifts further north. There's extensive loss of habitat in much of the southern part of the country. So that means that our forest, bird life and other wildlife could be changing dramatically over time. We're also seeing new species move into the state. So we know that this is already happening. We know that bird shifts are happening. I don't know exactly how they're going to play out, but here's a good example, red-bellied woodpeckers. I don't know about you folks, but when I was first doing my research, field research in the early 1980s, we never had red-bellied woodpeckers in Maine. But now they've been creeping up slowly from the southern states. And in 2010, they started moving into Maine, and now they've really moved throughout the southern part of the state and creeping up the coast. We see them quite a bit more regularly. This is true for other species as well. Tough to tip mouths are more common. We're seeing bluebirds that stay all winter long. That never used to happen. So we are definitely seeing shifts. Another study I'd like to draw your attention to is one that I participated in along with other members of the Beginning with Habitat program, where we did sort of an expert review of all the different species in Maine. Well, 442 different species in Maine. And based on what we know about their habitat needs, which ones do we think are going to be most vulnerable and why? Well, it turns out that we think about 37% of them are highly vulnerable and 38% are moderately vulnerable. The habitats that are most at risk include things like alpine areas, montane or mountain forests, peatlands, northern river shores, spruce flats, and cedar lowlands. And this has to do with varying climate conditions in mountainous areas and then also changes in hydrology. And then of all the different species that we see at risk, a number of them are sort of iconic Maine species. And things like the moose, and probably many of you have heard, we have a winter tick problem that has been escalating for moose over the last few years. Winter ticks have always been around, but with warming temperatures they're able to survive through our warmer winters. And in many cases they're causing severe mortality among the young, especially, but even among the older moose. We're now becoming more vulnerable to the warmer weather. We have loons that are struggling with heat when they're on their nest, getting overheated, getting more biting black flies and other insects torturing them and new parasites and other diseases that they are suffering that they never used to occur in this part of the state. Atlantic salmon and brook trout both need cool cold waters, and we're starting to see some changes in our waterways that could affect their longevity over the next several decades. And in 2012, we had an unusual situation. Atlantic puffin couldn't find the long narrow fish that they typically feed to their young. And so they were out collecting these fat little sand days that they were bringing back, and the nests were littered with these fish, but the chicks were starving to death because the chicks couldn't eat these fat they couldn't swallow the fat to fish. And we think that is a consequence that was a year when the Gulf of Maine was particularly warm. So there was that there's there's all these complicating factors that are coming into play for our different wildlife species. And fortunately, much of Maine is likely to remain still really good habitat for a brook trout but it's probably going to be. Only do we have most of the eastern population here in the state already, but conditions are hopefully going to persist to provide good habitat for them into the future, but warmer summer temperatures, there's more stress. They're having to look for really cold water deep pockets of cold water where they can hold over for the summer, and until the rains come in the fall. So what are Maine Audubon and partners doing to help forest birds and other wildlife here's where we get to the heart of the talk today, where we're going to be talking about our forestry for Maine birds program I think some of you in the who are participating here already know a little bit about this, but we're going to dive in a little bit deeper and I'm going to turn this over to Andy now. He's going to walk us through these slides but but he's going to have to tell me when he wants me to move forward so Andy take it away. All right. Thank you Sally is everybody hearing me okay. Sound good Andy. Okay great. Just briefly before I start going through the slides I think I'd like to just say why Maine Forest Service and particularly myself have become a partner with Maine Audubon the Forest Stewards Guild and others to develop this program and bring it out there. In Maine we have a fairly unique situation. As Sally pointed out we've got a lot of forest land but high high percentage of it is privately owned, which makes it a little different from other states so really the key to maintaining or improving this forest habitat for these forest birds lies with working with landowners. Now my particular title as landowner outreach forestry my audience are what we call family woodland owners say they've got between 10 and 1000 acres. So that that's not even counting the large landowners up north or in the eastern and far western parts of the state. Last there's round numbers 80,000 of those family woodland owners in Maine and they own somewhere in the vicinity of. I think it's around 5 million acres now based on the last. And these are woodlots averaging 50 to 60 acres of peace. So there's a key there to both the birds and also why people own their woods. The vast majority of these family woodland owners when they fill out a survey why they own their woods what they value about their woods wildlife is right up there. And even within the realm of wildlife songbirds is very important. So you have why do people want their was and what do birds need from woods and that gives us an opportunity to engage landowners in their was to recognize the habitat that they own protect steward what have you and to offer them some steps they can take to making sure that we don't lose any more and even enhance so that we can maybe make up for some of the losses that are already occurring. So that's my commercial for the main fire service our be woods wise program is our outreach program and you might have heard of that. There could be more questions on that later. And of course Andy one of the landowners that were also really keen on working with our land trusts because land trusts own a lot of forest land in Maine as well. Absolutely. Yeah, so happy to have you here. Yeah, they're some some land trusts have large lots but a lot of those are relatively small too so every little bit helps. Here is a really nice drawing. Sally convention who put this together but it really just pulls together so many of the elements of this program in one place. And I think these are available, aren't they from main Audubon. Yes we have. There's a copy of this on our website and we also could send folks smaller version it's actually the real version of the mural was created by Jada Fitch, a student, previous student of Maine College of Art, and she does remarkable work but anyway, four by six foot. Yeah, mural that's up at our fields on Nature Center, but we have a smaller version available online. So, yeah this this kind of all in one place it shows you some of those flyways. A lot of the birds that we're talking about are they migrate they're not here all winter. There's some incredible stories about the stamina of some of those birds or the ones you see some of those flyways they get out over the open water. You know, for hours and days at a time without landing. When they get to Maine what they want to really do is eat and make more babies and that's a baby bird so that's the value of the Northeast and Maine in particular. And that's why this program focuses on that. Next slide. And just one other note on here when you see those each of the different birds that are shown uses a different type of forest and a different place in the forest so that gives you a quick, quick view of there's a lot of variety out there. Yes. Why birds. Well, why not. I mean, for speaking for myself birds really particularly this time here they really put a voice to the forest and it's just an increasing joy to hear those birds understand, you know, who they are, why they are where they are. And they indicate things about your woods that you may not otherwise notice the birds I view of your forest is a is a great way to look at it. And of course, birds in some ways represent other species, the whole idea of the focus species and that I believe is a next slide maybe. Perhaps not but at any rate, what we do to help birds will help a variety of species to because they all sort of work together. So here's one of those declining species the Canada warbler. And you know the kind of story is there and Sally's kind of gone over some of this before, although, amongst all that red whereas, whereas the green and the not the lighter, a lot of that isn't is in Maine. Next slide for the project and this is this is where I was thinking we had our sort of focus species. There's far more than 20. There's a lot of these bird species using the woods main but these 20 taken as a whole kind of represent all the different parts of the forest, sometimes multiple parts that these different birds use and need to to thrive. So each one of these represents other bird species and and other. Other wildlife species really. This up into four forest types, generally speaking and eight different habitat features. And as we move ahead we'll look at those little more closely. Next slide. We'll show. Yeah, our four broad types of forest here in Maine, at least for this purpose, we refer to the northern softwoods, the northern hardwoods, the northern mixed woods and the oak pine. types. So in northern softwood priority birds include black throated green morbler's blackback woodpeckers, the northern parrilla. The boreal chickadee. flycatchers Bay breast of warblers. This is probably a good time for me to say that I'm a forester who's learning to bird rather than a bird or who's learning the forest. So if some of these names don't roll off my tongue all that easily it's. I'm getting there. Next slide. And, and the key is that you know each of these different species kind of uses a different part of that forest a different place in the forest different features habitat features in the forest. One reason that the typing has done is has a lot to do with the species that are there to. So northern softwoods bruce's for tamarack. Some white pine. You know, the particular attributes that they have these birds need it could be for cover for nesting for feeding those insects that they eat are very often insects that eat trees. You know, we don't want to have too many insects eat too many trees, but a little balance is good and if that keeps the bird population alive, you know, we can, we can sacrifice a few trees to a few insects just to keep the birds calling. Okay. And mixed woods and by mixed will we do a mean a mixture of the softwoods which another way to look at those is the conifer the needle bearing trees and then the hardwoods. Otherwise, sometimes referred to as deciduous or broadleaf. So when you have a mixed type and we have a lot of that main, these species here are particularly adapted to that the black throated blue warbler, which I, I think I can identify that one by sound. Yellow bellied sap sucker Magnolia warbler blackburnian warbler and the Canada warbler representative of that type. Next, northern hardwoods. That's a very prevalent, not only in the northern part of the state, but in the west and there's pockets of it here in the mid coast and southern. That's that would be your maple beach and birch types and yellow bellied sap suckers eastern would pee we's very and chestnut sided warblers. They all use parts are all of that type of forest. Next, and the old pine which I'm sitting here in Augusta say that the predominant type in this far the state is old pine. So tenagers scarlet tenagers wood thrushes oven birds, northern flickers. These, these are quite commonly found in the woods around this part of pain. Next, here's a quick look at the, you know, all the merch, so to speak, there's three different versions of guidebooks, you'll see on the right, the forestry for main birds that's the foresters guide that has the most detail in it gets really, you know, to say it's down in the weeds, you know, and forestry that's where, you know, the weeds are forestry or forestry is all about getting in the weeds. So for foresters other professionals and landowners that really want to do a deep dive the forestry for main birds foresters guide is great. The on the left the woodland owners guide is a little more broad brush but it captures all the high points. And if you just wanted an introduction to the process or to the program. That would be your best bet. And we've gotten a lot of those distributed out through our, our district foresters something else I wanted to mention in the commercial that main forest service has 10 district foresters across the state they can come visit woodland owners and talk about their woods with them. And if, or when wildlife habitats high on their list, our folks can talk about that too. Although we may want to refer to actual wildlife biologist at times. The smaller guide in the middle was designed for loggers, because when we talk about actually managing a woods foresters come up with the plans but most of time it's a logger that makes them happen. So, over the past several years the loggers in Maine through the certified logging program and other outlets have all become at least familiar with this. So that if a logger is talking to a landowner and the landowner expresses interest in habitat, particularly in bird habitat the logger is not clueless the logger knows what, or, you know, many loggers will understand. And it's a two way street communication about outcomes when you're doing harvesting is very important. And last but not least the wonderful trading cards which nobody actually trades because they're too nice everyone keeps them. These are available through Audubon and also we've got a little supply at the main forest service that we can pass out as well. The, well the three pamphlets I think are all available on the main Audubon website. You can also purchase the foresters guidebook. I believe I'm correct on that. For those of you who want it. One way to get a hold of the pamphlet or the bird cards as I mentioned this call your main forest service district faster. Okay, next. I would say that the, the logging guide of other states have not who have similar programs to Forster for main birds. Not necessarily connected with the loggers and I just got a call this spring from one of the major logging groups in the state that said hey, can we get some more copies of that logging guide they're very popular among our members so they've requested another copy. And main forest service did help us reprint some of these materials so we do have a bunch at main Audubon to. Yep. Okay. So, broadly speaking, one of the goals of the program is to get a variety of forest types not just based on species but based on some things we'll talk about more such as the diversity of trees, the diversity of age, the structural diversity of the forest. Again, we'll get into this. This all contributes to overall wildlife diversity. One of the goals is more of the mature, uneven aged type of far stand. I just want to say birds don't necessarily worry about how old the trees are but they look at things like size, height, where the canopy is, and to get some of those attributes you do need to have some older forest so we'll talk about that as we continue. I guess we can move on. This is, if we were able to do this in the field this would be kind of the best part of the whole show is what we call the handy forest habitat assessment. An assessment sort of maybe not quite as detailed as an inventory but is taking stock of what you have in a particular woods, and you walk around and you stop here and there, and you look at what we call the visible acre. So it's not just where you stop facing ahead that the trick here is to stop and turn around 360 degrees and look at that part of the woods, and then using your hands. So it's seeing me on the screen probably not but that's why this Sally is demonstrating. And this, this poster here also demonstrates these items so to briefly explain the items that you would be looking for at any spot that you were assessing. On your left hand. This represents the living items. Generally speaking, so it talks about the trees that are there and where they are and, by the way, water. The right hand. I don't like to call them dead things I just call them the things that aren't alive right now. And so for instance stags. The WM in this graphic stands for woody material. Sometimes sort of divide that in the course and fine and sometimes you go a little further and you say course medium and fine, but these are the parts of the trees that are no longer photosynthesizing they're in the process of decaying or, you know, breaking down, and they do contribute habitat in a number of ways. Water is also important, and that's, in most cases, I see the leaves and needles, particularly important for nesting habitat for certain birds that will get into getting back over to the left hand living things that really that the three. In both cases your center three fingers are are the real, the real deal. The three on the left hand refer to over story mid story and under story. And those are sort of specific vertical height segments under story meaning ground to about six feet. Mid story is six feet to 30 feet and over stories anything over 30 feet. I think the next slide shows actual people in the woods, trying to figure out how many fingers on each hand and what they mean. I see that they're working with those core three on each. And really, if you know if you're sort of just starting out doing this if you get those three on each hand right you're going to cover a lot of what what birds are looking for the way you know the birds view birds I view of the woods. So I think we can move ahead, let's want to add anything Sally. Okay, just. I don't have anything but I'm having trouble getting the slide to move ahead now. Okay. Well, this boss is doing that this is from an actual far as you for me birds workshop. I believe this, this particular one was held up in in Bradley. Where the Lennards Mill Logging Museum is. There we go. So this is referring to again the four broad types op for opine and asked for northern softwood and h for northern hardwood and w for mixed wood. This picture I would say is in northern hardwood stand. It's fairly typical in the, instead of the western mountains and here and there all over the state. And some of our, you know, most beautiful recreational opportunities are in those areas. And also, they're valuable trees there from the timber standpoint. So a lot of forest management is about balancing different values, different priorities for different landowners. One of the things that you might ask a forester to do is to prepare some sort of a plan for wood lot. And part of what they are going to be measuring anyway has to do with the forest type, the age and the size and the height of the trees a lot of that goes into the inventory of tree timber value with a little tweaking it's also an inventory of habitat. Next slide. And the graphic again sort of showing what I was talking about those three vertical layers referred to as over story mid story and under story. And this is starting to relate the different species that need, at least partly they need these parts of the forest, either for their feeding for their breeding nesting cover, what have you. So if you look at the under story the oven bird which we were talking earlier that I mentioned yesterday, I was out in the woods and I heard a very loud oven bird and somebody said have you ever not heard a loud oven bird there. They're quite distinctive once you recognize the sound. They nest on the ground. They need an under story, and particularly they actually need that other finger that that leaf litter layer. However, where we heard the bird was up in probably in the mid story, so it's not just every bird in a silo. A lot of these bird species need these multiple layers for different functions. So this is gets back to that whole diversity thing. So it's a great tool to have all of these things happen on one acre. But if you have even 1015 20 acres. You do have the room to provide a certain variety of habitat. Next slide. Standing dead would of course you think woodpeckers obviously here's the pilliated, I believe, our largest largest woodpecker in the state and probably in the eastern part of the country. They're a lot of fun to hear, they're a lot of fun to see. They do make large holes in stags. Of course they'll also go after some live trees too. And that's a little strategy they have I believe to to attract some bugs. So in some cases they create their own habitat. They also use dead and dying trees quite a bit, and they create those large oval holes for nesting. Sometimes other species use that after pilliated are done. So this is part of the value is dead wood but it's part of a living forest. Next slide. Rough grouse one of the prominent users of the down material particularly large logs they need to get up on those and drum as part of their courtship and possibly maybe they just do it for fun I don't know. But at any rate they need to do it, and having those large pieces of wood large logs decaying slowly on the forest floor. It helps that particular bird species. And I think the next slide will show that again other species use that large material on the ground as a travel way through the woods, let's them move faster. And that's just how they've evolved. So what you do for birds is good for other species that's an American Martin if I'm not mistaken. That one's a Fisher. Sorry, Fisher, that's a Fisher. Okay. Looking for food underneath those big down logs but also as you say traveling through the forest on them. Yeah. Okay. Next slide. Here's our oven bird. And when you get a close up look at the nest you can see why it's called an oven bird because it does look like an oven. Generally speaking, when people learn to recognize the call or the song that they use the little trick of teacher teacher teacher. I personally prefer pizza pizza pizza, because that helps me remember it as an oven bird, but either way, or whatever works for you when you're out in the woods and you hear that very distinct sound you know that it's an oven bird. And if you're hearing oven birds and is a pretty good chance that there's an adequate leaf litter layer that they can nest in. That means what the presence of the bird, the presence the bird tells you something about your woods. Not only does the woods tell you something about your wildlife but it works both ways. So, the idea of the small gap. This is referring to canopy gaps and remember canopy. The story is what we're talking about that 30 feet and up. And it's easy when you're walking around to just look at eye level and think that the opening that you're looking at is at the ground level for the birds that need the canopy gaps at 30 feet or higher. That's where the gap needs to be so it's just a reminder that when you're doing these assessments to look up, you need to look around but also look up. Many times the canopy gap is not as big as the opening on the ground. When we talk about the size range of these gaps were usually in the vicinity of, oh, maybe as small as a 10th acre or quarter acre, up to no more than a two acre gap and for a lot of woods around here a two acre canopy gap feels pretty large. In the scheme of things there's not a giant opening in the woods but on a small wood lot that can seem pretty big. Another thing to consider is that if you're trying to get an understory established at zero to six foot layer. Most of the time you need some light to reach the forest floor so the canopy gap can also lead to creation of the understory, which eventually grows up to be a mid story. So this is kind of getting at some management decisions that can be made based upon what you have. And what you think is missing that you want to sort of bring along slowly. Next slide. On the other end of the sort of spectrum the mature forest the late successional is another way to look at it. People use that term rather than old growth because old growth and kind of mean different things to different people, but the idea of the older forest with the larger trees. And by the way that's how you get larger material on the forest floor is that trees have grown old and either died been blown over. In some cases cut and maybe partly removed but not entirely. And when we're talking about large trees and late successional we really kind of start that conversation at around 16 inch diameter trees, not just one but many of them. And also there's a few other attributes of late successional. But of course, when you hear or see a late successional bird. The birds telling you something. Anyway, this is a picture of Sally measuring a 37 inch diameter hemlock tree. That's, that's a pretty good size hemlock tree. We do have some of those around. But they'll tend to be in those stands that have had less, less activity. So sometimes the decision is not whether you manage but how you manage and leaving some of these bigger older trees can be very beneficial for a number of things, which I mentioned below the carbon maybe just back it up real quick. These help with climate resilience, they are legacies of, you know, for, you know, both the genetic material that they are seed sources to help fill in those gaps. And of course, they're holding on the more carbon. Okay, now next slide. The riparian areas and wetland forests are also very important. We, you know, do a lot of work. We meaning main forest service at protecting water quality through our best management practices program and the booklet that goes with it. So, while we're protecting water quality we're leaving buffers or we're managing the buffers along streams and ponds and lakes differently leaving more cover, which by the way helps maintain those temperatures that cooler temperatures longer. I was mentioning for brook trout. There's just all sorts of benefits to protecting the water, not the least of which is that clean water is a primary ingredient in good beer, but that's another slideshow so let's move on. Okay, so this this graphic is kind of, again, to look at a particular scene in the woods and to pick out those those habitat elements. Another way to look at them as a structural, you know, if you're sort of in it, have the ecological lens you talk about structure. If you have the, the habitat lens you talk about. Well also structure but things like the over story on the story etc. So I think if you hit. So with this this slide. More vigorous upper canopy trees scarlet tanger need those. Now that arrows pointing to a canopy gap you can kind of see it as back a ways from where the camera is but you know you see a little more light coming in. And I want to say that is a flycatcher. It's the Eastern would pee we, which is a flycatcher. Yes, there you go. And once you recognize their call and see where they are you can. It really works I can just think of an aha moment I had when I heard it, and I suddenly realized I was sitting there, right on the edge of a forest canopy gap where a couple large trees had blown down. And you need to sort of hide on the edges fly out catch their insects and fly back. So this is, I guess, a forest version of those aerial insectivores, sort of more specific than the ones that are in decline. I think our Eastern would pee we's are doing okay at the moment. And the thing about all these pieces that are doing okay. You know, let's not ignore them. We want them to continue doing okay. We don't want them to get on to that, you know, worrying, the list of birds to worry about so, you know, if we keep doing what we're doing and do more of it will. We'll keep those guys in good shape. So the denser mid story, you can kind of see that 30 foot. There is a thrush. Yes, wood thrush. That's the wood thrush, which it's a little bit obvious easier to find a hermit thrush and a wood thrush. I would have named them the other way around but you know that's just me. Anyway, snags and cavities. They're going to be beneficial to woodpeckers in particular. And the next one, you know, the denser understory. That would be our black third of blue. You got it Andy. I'm better than I thought I was. They especially love hobble bush. Yeah. Now, many of us who walk through the woods do not love hobble bush but it helps to know that somebody does. That's that's pretty particularly and I think northern hardwoods is where I've come across the most of it. Yes. And then that ground cover layer again the leaf litter. I think we're going to see the oven bird. Okay. And then the down and dead wood. And that is the rough grouse. Yes. Okay. So again, it's just another another way to help you identify these different parts of the forest. And when you're sort of taking inventory or doing the assessment determining what do you have what was missing. So with forestry for main birds, there's kind of this, you know, idealized goal or it's not maybe idealized but this is what we're hoping to get a distribution of young intermediate older and mature farce. Right now around this part of the state we really have a lot of the intermediate and beginning to be older. A lot of this is still coming back from reversion from alcohol of agriculture. That's on my mind for some reason, but reverting from agricultural lands we have a lot of intermediate aged and size stands and we're actually lacking up still a bit on the young forest and we're particularly lacking on mature, simply because these stands have not been around long enough to produce the large trees and the attributes of a late successional stand. I think next slide would be good. Maybe not back just back it up one more and just, you notice that the bomb there that the. There's kind of a relation between tree size and age obviously takes a while for a tree to get large. Sometimes you can be full though you can have old trees that for various reasons have not gotten large. And as I mentioned before birds are really looking at the physical attributes. So age relates to these attributes but my suggestion is don't get hung up necessarily on age if you have trees in the right size and height canopy categories then that's what the birds want. And I'll just I'll just throw in there that while we have a lot of intermediate age for us here it particularly in the southern part of the state. There are ways to create more of those older forest characteristics and that's what we're really trying to get at through the one of the things we're trying to get at through this program, which the last slide really illustrated, you know, can you do things in an active management to create those gaps that simulate natural disturbance of trees for older trees falling down can you do something to open up an area where you get more diverse layers of vegetation and that that sort of thing can you create snags. You can kind of fool fool the system. Well you can work with it. And you can nudge it along sometimes. We farters realize that we don't really make the trees grow, they do that on their own but we like to nudge them a little bit one way or the other. For all the reasons that people own woods. This is referring to a few of the more specific outreach programs that have been around for a while. I think in the lead on a project in Western Maine is called my main woods, and now they they're working on an area in the lower Kennebec River watershed, where, and maybe Sally you want to jump back in with a little bit about that. Sure. So, we, we've been working with landowners both in Western Maine and in central Maine to try to encourage them to create wildlife friendly management plans, and then of course to implement those plans after those plans are written but to work with a plan to create a wildlife friendly management plan and if you're interested in doing that and willing to do that, we do have some funding available. In this case for particularly for the Kennebec area, some funding upfront to help folks get started on that process. And so this is just a screenshot of one of the informational brochures that's on our website, you can go look at that if you're interested and and or give me a call. I'll send you an email later on. Be happy to talk with you about it we have June 30 is our deadline for getting folks enrolled and we still have quite a bit of money to that we could hand out so if you're interested, get in touch. Yep, getting touched directly with main Audubon for that particular program. Not sure what numbers slide we're at moving ahead. Oh yes. Part of outreach here is getting some signage up in in what we call demonstration forest this one is at the Yankee Woodlot in Skowhegan. Anybody within striking distance of that would lot it's a great, it's a great place to walk around. In a demonstration forest, I don't know 3040 years. They're in the process of creating new, new signage and new interpretive trails and as part of that these really lovely looking forestry for main birds. Signs are going up to help people connect what we're talking about in the slide show with an actual location. I would say that also at the Yankee Woodlot they're doing something called picture post where they're taking pictures from the same point of view over time which shows you that slow or sometimes not so slow change in the forest. They was recently some harvesting done there so they've created a few gaps and they've also got some places where they're nudging it towards that mature forest situation. It's a great place to visit and walk around and it's a collaborative collaborative effort. The lands owned by the state of Maine, Maine Forest Service helps with the management but the Somerset County soil water conservation district is really the sort of the caretakers there and they're the ones working on a lot of the educational material there. And we do have also have signs up at the Sewell Woods in Bath and the Hidden Valley Nature Center in Jefferson and the Woodbury Bird Sanctuary in Litchfield. So, check them out, go visit them. Yeah, all those places are open to the public and welcoming of visitors. See you soon, Forest for Fish. So this is the trailer right for that. Right. Right, so there was a program that was started in Michigan called Forest for Fish, and we were very excited to learn about both Andy and I learned about it at a conference we were at a few years ago. We are bringing that program here to Maine and it's going to be complimentary to our Forestry for Maine birds program. It's, we already talked about the importance of waterways and riparian habitat but we wanted to draw a little bit more attention. So, we're working on some new outreach materials for this as well because what happens in the forest really affects what happens in the water whether it's vernal pools, streams, ponds, lakes, you name it, and all the critters that live there. Again, one of the things that makes Maine relatively unique in the country and even in the northeast is the amount of good clean water that we have and the reason for that is we have a lot of forest land that filters rainwater and slows it down and lets it percolate through and, you know, part of our effort. And some of our water districts are also really taking note of that. So Andy and I have been working with the Portland Water District for example on some forest management to enhance that dwell to keep that water really good quality primary source of drinking water for about 250,000 people in the state. Yeah, and that's referring to Subago Lake by the way which. Yes. Does have quite a, you know, the, if you think of that area, it kind of overlap some of the bird priority areas but it's a high priority for water quality. I just have a few summary slides I'm going to go through now to kind of pull things together, which is shifting back to the big picture here strategies for how to conserve wildlife and habitat and those of you who've been involved in the land trust community, maybe familiar with these already but if not, it'll be a little primer for you. So one of the things that we are really thinking about when we think about not just the forestry for main birds on an individual property, but how does that fit into the bigger picture here. And how does that fit into the bigger picture of the work of land trusts and other and state agencies that are involved in larger landscape scale conservation. One of the things that we want to do is just pay attention to where are what we call the climate strongholds those places where there's the likelihood that no matter what happens with changes in our climate. We know that there's that those will continue to be places of high biodiversity, high geographic diversity, and therefore support lots of different plant and animal species. We come out on the left there the dark green areas are places that are considered climate strongholds again you can see how main really jumps out there, and the map on the right is a more detailed map that was created by the nature Conservancy that looks at sort of climate resilient areas, and again main really western main in particular jumps out as being really key areas. The characteristics of those climate resilient areas well one is that you have a really diverse landscape so you have mountains, lakes, rivers, wetlands. And for us of course, and if we keep all of that intact, even though the particular species might change over time. The plants and animals who reside there will still do well. And so, regardless of whether boreal chickadees are still here in the state something else will take its place in the future and so we want to keep that habitat in good shape so we can make more baby birds. And likewise we really want to make sure that we're, we're maintaining that high quality water that we have right now that not only supports people love to fish, but the fish that are in the rivers but mink that are feeding on the fish and the wood thrushes that are singing the trees, etc. And one of the key things that we need to do with our waterways is reconnect them. And probably some of you have been introduced to the stream smart program, may not have on main force service and others are deeply involved in a program to reconnect our streams many of which have been pinched or otherwise damned and limited with limited movement of both water and aquatic organisms up and down the stream so you want to try to improve that along the way. And as we talked about in a number of cases. Part of what we're missing on the landscape are these more diverse, mature forest stands and so working with what we have in hand and forest civil cultural techniques we can enhance some of those habitats or, as Andy said sort of push them along in directions that we are interested in. And finally, just a note that you know management and then how you conduct your, your management or your operations really matter. And so thinking about not only what you want to accomplish in the, your forest land but how you're going about doing that is really important to work with work with a forester work with your logger and try to create the best habitat that you can. So with that, I'm going to stop there and we can. If you're interested in more information we have a lots more information on our website, the forestry for main bird website at main Audubon.org. And we have materials that we can get to you if you want some hard copies of materials or get them through your district forester. And if you have follow up questions you can contact either me or Andy. So I'm going to stop sharing now and see if we have any questions from folks. Yeah, we do we have a few questions so I'll let you there we go we can see you better now. We had a couple questions that had to do with insects. Because you mentioned back in your presentation Sally that there's been a big decline in insect populations that's affecting birds. Do we know what's causing that decline in insects. Well, we know some of the answers to that so I'm sure many of you have heard about monarch butterfly declines for example you know dramatic declines. And one of the reasons for that is because they used to leave the little sort of rows of weeds really in between their plowed areas and the edges of their fields or the waterways or whatever but a lot of that has disappeared over time as more and more of those areas have been plowed under. So that you know lots of habitat is one reason. And another reason for sure are some of the pesticides we're using for example neonicotinoids have been shown to be particularly devastating for things like bees. And there have been situations where I know there were some studies done up in Canada that were able to actually document this the presence of certain pesticides in bird tissue, because of the food that they were the insect food that they were eating. So that may not necessarily kill the birds but it might, it might cause behavioral changes or it might make them more susceptible to stress or disease or whatever it may be so it's, you know it's a combination of things, and we don't fully understand the answers yet. So we're actually doing a little bit of a study here at Maine Audubon, in conjunction with the Maine Entomological Society and some others, where we're first of all just trying to gather any data sets that are out there of long term data sets that are tracking insect population so we can get a sense of how are our insect populations doing here in Maine, are they declining, are we in trouble, what do we know what don't we know, and what can we do about it. There's also some legislation pending right now this year that has to do with addressing some of these pesticide issues. Great, thank you. And another just insect type question that I don't know a lot of people might have ticks are so prevalent right now are there any birds that eat ticks. I don't know if you've heard this but I certainly have heard oh you want to get turkey the turkeys are eating the ticks but then I read something that was a little bit more believable that said no turkeys don't even have the ability to they don't have the flexibility in their beaks to get at those little ticks. So, I don't really know the answer to that. Except for Guinea hens, that's the one thing that I do have neighbors who've had Guinea to hens who swear it'll see them, you know, yeah, but in terms of wild birds, I don't really know. Yeah, yeah. Somebody has asked, what's the first step to get started in Woods wise. Andy you want to take that one. Yeah, absolutely. And in fact I that question I did offer something in the chat but basically what I often say to people is walk in the woods with a forester is your next best step. We had the main forest service I mentioned before we have district foresters we have 10 of them that cover the state. There's a function on the website to type in the name of the town where your wood lot is and it'll bring up the contact information for the local district forester. Also you can contact me, and I'll get you connected as I just did with the person who was asking, hopefully did. This is a, this is a step where, you know, you can walk around, ask questions, you know, get general answers, some broad suggestions, our district foresters are not going to come in and tell you what to do with your woods. They're going to try to help you make a good informed decision about what you can do and a lot of it derives back to what is it that you're looking for. So, with habitat, there are certain things you can do but of course, sometimes that depends on the type of wildlife habitat you're looking for. The, the follow up question to how do you get started with woods wise and, you know, meaning with your district forester, is there a cost for that and the answer is no. We refer to that as it's a prepaid situation, your tax dollars at work. However, there are limits to what a district forester can provide and at the end of that conversation, you may decide you need something like a forest management plan that it would be helpful and beneficial for managing your woods, or your habitat or whatever you want to however you want to look at it. Sally alluded to some funds that they have to assist with certain types of forest management plans. The main forest service also has a program called the woods wise incentives program that can help with forest management plans, and the two programs are separate but they're not mutually exclusive so you can get a woods wise plan and, as long as it covers certain things about wildlife in it. And you're in the right part of the state for Sally's program. You can get some additional help there. Our woods wise program I do want to emphasize covers the entire state. So, in a nutshell that's that's what woods wise is. And there's also funding available through the natural resources conservation service they have their own separate process for providing funds and helping support. So you can get the development of a management plan and then also to pay for some of the activities following that plan. And if you if you want more information about that you can get in touch with us you can get in touch with Andy we can refer you over. Absolutely. Great, thank you those tips for funding are always much much appreciated. Great question here from Caroline. There are lots of stands of even edged pole size stands in southern Maine that were clear cut in the in the past. What's the best strategy for them. Andy, I just keep waiting for me. Yes. And I see it in the chat now and the question was pre commercial tending. My go to answer on these types of questions is it depends. So this is really where I think you want to rather than me just say yes absolutely do a thing. It kind of depends what kind of trees are there. The site they're growing on. In some cases on sites where trees don't grow fast the thinning may not really boost the growth very much, but on other sites by thinning reducing the amount of competition, the trees that remain will get bigger faster. They'll get taller sooner. They'll add diameter and crown and crown is very important for well for the trees and also as a habitat feature. And a lot of those insects are up there feeding on leaves and that's what the birds want to eat so. Again, I would say you know a pole size stand says to me that it's in that intermediate age class it's not the early successional it's not the later. Another thing that probably I didn't mention, or I should have with parsley for main birds is this landscape idea. Obviously, when it's your woods that's all you can really do anything about, but you can look around or the professionals you work with can look around. As much as like the 2500 acres surrounding your area and what is there a lot of what is there not much of. And if for whatever reason you're in an area with a lot of. Well, we know in general we're going to have a lot of those intermediate size and age stands. Is there also a lot of early successional habitat already happening from other harvesting or reverting agriculture, in which case you might want to make the decision to thin with the idea of getting your biggest trees to get even bigger sooner, and you're working towards that mature forest situation. And if for some reason you're surrounded by a lot of relatively mature woods and what's missing are those gaps or the early successional you may choose to have some of that happen. The other thing that you have to understand is the types of trees you have not every species of tree will grow to be 100 200 300 years old that you want, and eventually in a late successional stand. So, you have to temper your expectations to what you have. And that's why it depends. And that's why really walking with a forest or is so many times that's the next best step. And Andy Andy will tell you this I've been in the field with Andy and other foresters all looking at the same site and trying to figure out okay what do we have here, what do we want. Andy and Andy get there, and Andy will always say well it depends and he will always say if there are three. If there are two foresters looking at the same site you'll get four different answers. So, there's, there's no one answer there's no one way to do this, but I will, I, as a non forester. I will tell you that it's, it's helpful to talk to more than one forester to get different perspectives, and to figure out who you want to work with, do you click in terms of personality click in terms of goals, and the more clear you can be about what your goals are for the management of your property, the more helpful the forester can be. And just to get back a little bit towards that. The question about the full size stands, depending on how many acres you have to work with some of those polls size stands can be managed towards late successional but maybe other parts of them. And again it can depend on the species that are there might be a place where something on the early successional or the gap side is what you want to go for. So let's talk about the timber value, but even for people who place wildlife high above timber income on their list of goals. My experience is that money never doesn't matter. So knowing the value of the trees you're working with can help with the decisions as to what to cut when the cut markets change a lot, and they can change across the state. And by speaking working with a forestry you can bring in that timber value side to help inform your decision, not necessarily to drive it totally but to know what you're working with. Awesome. Well, that's a lot of great information. Coming towards the end of our time here. Any last minute questions that somebody wants to pop into the chat while I'm saying goodbye I'll just take a minute to thank both you Sally and you Andy for joining us today. That was great information and I'm sure it's got us all thinking. There are two to do this presentation because birds are really at top of mind right now. So thanks for making time to do that. You've been great about inviting folks to be in touch, if they have questions or need more information. And we will be sending a recording of this out to everyone afterwards in case that's helpful. So get out there and enjoy the sun if you've got it today everyone. Thanks for joining us thanks for taking time, and we will see you the next time. Bye everyone thanks thanks everybody for coming and I hope that we've inspired you to get out there and, and take a fresh look at your woods. Yes. Absolutely. Thank you very much. And Donna thanks for hosting. Absolutely, our pleasure. I stuck my email into the chat. So if that makes it in the recording. That's a good way to get in touch. Yeah, somebody asked about that I believe that the chat I think you can't copy out of the chat but I think it's included in the recording, but I will definitely include your both your emails in that in that you know follow up email where I share the link. All right. Great. Great. Thank you. Take care. Thanks. Bye bye. Bye.