The Wildlife

The barred owl is the forest's most conspicuous large predator, and its presence here signals good habitat quality: old trees with cavities, proximity to wetlands, enough prey to sustain a pair year-round. Its territory encompasses dozens of acres of mixed forest and edge — one bird's range effectively indexes the health of a whole landscape.

The "who cooks for you" call is reliably heard on spring and early summer evenings. A mated pair has nested in a large hollow red oak on the upper slope for at least six consecutive years. As winters moderate, barred owls are expanding northward and have been documented displacing spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest — an early example of how climate-shifted ranges create new competitive pressures.

The largest woodpecker in North America, the pileated is an ecosystem engineer. The rectangular cavities it excavates in large dead trees become critical nest sites for at least twelve other species, including wood ducks, flying squirrels, and several owl species. A tree the pileated has worked is a tree doing double ecological duty.

On this property, the presence of large-diameter standing snags — a management choice in explicit tension with conventional timber practices — directly supports the pileated population. Its loud, almost pterodactyl-like call and the sound of its excavation carry surprisingly far through the forest on still mornings. Finding its rectangular excavations in a dead beech or ash is always a small satisfaction.

The ovenbird's accelerating "teacher teacher TEACHER" call, rising in volume to fill the forest canopy, is one of the defining sounds of northeastern hardwood forests in May. A ground-nesting warbler, it builds a domed leaf-litter nest with a side entrance — resembling a Dutch oven, hence the name — that is extraordinarily well-camouflaged but highly vulnerable to ground predators and nest parasitism by brown-headed cowbirds.

As an area-sensitive forest interior species, the ovenbird requires large, unfragmented patches of mature forest. It will not breed in woodlots below a threshold size, making it a useful indicator of forest interior quality. Its abundance on this land reflects the scale of the contiguous forest block here, which connects to larger tracts on adjacent properties.

The wood thrush's flute-like song — spiraling through intervals and harmonics in ways that seem to defy a bird's anatomy — is widely considered the most beautiful bird song in North America. It fills the forest at dawn and dusk from mid-May through July, and its absence in a tract of seemingly suitable forest is an immediate signal that something is wrong.

Wood thrush populations have declined more than fifty percent since 1966. They are area-sensitive forest interior breeders that also require adequate wintering habitat in Central American lowland forest — a conservation challenge that spans two continents. On this land, a breeding pair or two is typically present, but the species is far less common than the forest structure would suggest it should be. That gap between potential and presence is its own form of data.

Vermont's state bird and the only thrush in this genus to winter in North America, the hermit thrush breeds in cool, mixed conifer-hardwood forest — exactly the transitional habitat found on the upper slopes here. Its song rises in spiraling phrases across different pitches, each phrase beginning with a long clear note and cascading into complex harmonics. It is less strident than the wood thrush's song, more inward, a sound that seems to come from deeper in the trees.

The hermit thrush has a characteristic posture when perched: it raises and slowly lowers its rufous tail, a reflexive behavior that may serve as a distraction display for predators. Watch for it on the forest floor and in low shrubs along woodland paths in early spring, when it arrives before most leaves have emerged.

The American woodcock is a shorebird that moved inland and never looked back. It inhabits the shrubby young alder thickets and moist forest edges along the lower reaches of the property, probing the soil for earthworms with its long, flexible-tipped bill. Its cryptic plumage makes it nearly invisible on the forest floor; its booming nasal "peent" call on March and April evenings makes it impossible to miss.

The woodcock's spring "sky dance" — a male spiraling up two hundred feet into the dusk sky, then descending in a zig-zagging flutter — is one of the great spectacles of northeastern bird life. It happens in the same fields and clearings year after year, which makes it reliable to observe once you know where to look. The woodcock's dependence on young forest habitat means its population is a barometer for landscape-level forest age diversity.

Unlike many wood warblers, the chestnut-sided warbler has actually benefited from the forest succession cycles that characterize managed and recovering northeastern forests. It breeds in shrubby young forest — the dense regrowth of a cleared patch, the edges of a logged section, the thicket that springs up after a large wind-thrown gap. Its bright yellow cap, black mask, and chestnut flanks make it one of the easier warblers to identify.

On this property, the chestnut-sided warbler is most common in the regenerating areas along the forest edge and in young aspen thickets. It sings "pleased pleased pleased to MEETCHA" from exposed twigs with a certain insistence. Its relatively stable populations are a reminder that not all birds are in decline — those adapted to disturbance-based habitat are often doing fine. The challenge is maintaining sufficient disturbance-based habitat within a landscape that is aging toward mature forest.

The male indigo bunting in full summer plumage is one of the most intensely blue birds in North America — a blue so saturated it seems almost artificial. Ironically, the bird has no blue pigment. The color is entirely structural, created by the microscopic barb structure of the feathers diffracting light. In poor light the male looks almost black. The female is a dull brown, helping her remain inconspicuous on the nest.

Indigo buntings nest in shrubby forest edges, roadsides, and regenerating clearings. They migrate at night, navigating by the stars — they actually learn which stars are fixed (i.e., close to Polaris) during a critical learning period as fledglings, then use that pattern throughout their lives. The birds wintering in Central America and the Caribbean are the same individuals that nest along the forest edges here each summer.

The ruffed grouse is a year-round resident and one of the few birds that actually buries itself in snow for insulation during cold snaps. Its drumming — a male beating his wings against the air to create an accelerating thump-thump-thump that sounds more like machinery than a bird — carries through the forest in late March and April from a characteristic log or stump that a male may use for years.

Grouse populations require diverse forest structure: young aspen and alder thickets for feeding and courtship cover, dense conifer stands for winter roost sites, and mature forest with downed logs for drumming. Populations have declined significantly across much of the Northeast, correlated with the loss of young forest habitat as the landscape ages. Maintaining a mosaic of forest ages — including actively created young forest patches — is among the most direct ways to support grouse and the suite of other species that depend on early successional habitat.

The common merganser is a cavity-nesting duck that selects nest sites in large hollow trees near cold, clear streams — often more than a mile from the water it will use for feeding. After hatching, the female leads the ducklings to water in a journey that can require them to leap from a cavity ten or twenty feet above the ground. The ducklings survive this fall because they weigh almost nothing and their bones are not yet fully calcified.

Mergansers are fish-eaters with serrated bills designed for gripping slippery prey underwater. Their presence on the headwater streams of this property depends on both the water quality (cold, clear, with adequate fish populations) and the presence of large cavity trees nearby. A breeding pair is recorded most years along the main stream corridor. The female's rusty-headed silhouette surfacing from a dive in a clear pool is one of the minor pleasures of early spring on the water.

The belted kingfisher announces itself before you see it — a rattling, machine-gun call that echoes off the water as it hurtles downstream. It nests by excavating a tunnel, sometimes three feet long, into earthen stream banks. The tunnel slopes upward so that runoff drains away from the nest chamber, an engineering solution discovered independently by kingfishers on every continent.

Kingfisher presence is one of the best indicators of stream health available. They require clear, shallow water where fish are visible from an overhanging perch, clean stream banks suitable for nest tunnels, and fish populations sufficient to feed growing chicks. When the kingfisher disappears from a stream, something in that system has changed. On the main stream here, they are a reliable year-round presence, though the nesting pair does move downstream in winter when ice restricts hunting access.

Despite its name, the Louisiana waterthrush is not a thrush but a warbler — one that walks along rocky stream edges, bobbing its tail constantly, hunting aquatic invertebrates from the water surface and bank vegetation. It is one of the earliest neotropical migrants to return each spring, arriving in April before most leaves have emerged, its loud ringing song carrying up and down the stream corridors.

The Louisiana waterthrush is a stream-quality specialist. It is particularly sensitive to stream acidification and sedimentation, and its territories require large stretches of clean, rocky flowing water. It nests in the root masses of streambank trees or beneath overhanging banks. On this property, a pair holds territory along the main stream corridor each summer, and the male's loud descending song — one of the first complex songs of spring — is a reliable marker that winter is actually over.

The chickadee is everywhere and never taken seriously enough. It excavates its own nest cavities in soft dead wood — birch snags are a favorite — and those cavities subsequently become critical nest sites for a cascade of other species. It is one of the most cognitively sophisticated birds on the continent, capable of suppressing the hippocampus's normal forgetting mechanisms during autumn to retain the spatial locations of thousands of food-cache sites. It can also lower its body temperature by up to twelve degrees Celsius on cold nights to conserve energy, a form of regulated hypothermia.

The chickadee's "chickadee-dee-dee" call varies in complexity with the level of threat: the more "dee" notes appended, the more dangerous the predator. Smaller, more agile predators like pygmy owls receive more notes than large hawks. Other forest species — nuthatches, warblers, woodpeckers — attend to chickadee alarm calls and respond accordingly. The chickadee is not just a bird. It is the forest's communications infrastructure.

The eastern bluebird's recovery from near-extinction in the mid-twentieth century is one of the great success stories of targeted habitat management. Populations collapsed when cavity trees were removed, European starlings and house sparrows took over the cavities that remained, and the forest-meadow edge habitat they require was developed or grown over. The nest box program — simple wooden boxes mounted on poles in open fields and forest edges — allowed populations to rebuild dramatically from the 1970s onward.

Bluebirds are not deep-forest birds; they breed along the forest-meadow interface and in open woodland. The nest boxes along the south-facing field edges of this property have supported bluebird pairs for twelve of the past sixteen seasons. Their vivid blue and rust coloring on a perch in morning light remains startling. They are a direct, tangible consequence of the decision to maintain open edge habitat alongside the maturing forest — and a reminder that active intervention, when targeted correctly, can make a difference.