Song sparrows, chipping sparrows, yellow breasted chats and many other birds allied with borders and edge environments have been disappearing over the past 30 years. Many other birds use these areas for searching for food and evasion.
A significant element adding to the disintegrating population of these birds has been the shift in land use practices.
Loss of shrub and edge territory through people leaving their farms and urbanization and the degradation of edge habitats seem to be the foremost causes of the declines in these bird's populations. Land owners try to get the most production from their lands, they cut or graze pastures and plant crops right to the forest edges. This abolishes shrubs making a brief edge between fields and wood land that is of little value to the birds and other wild life.
For more than 60 years at no cost to them, land owners signed up for public access programs that the wild life bureau has been implementing. this is a border cut program on hundreds of private farms within the farming communities. This agenda involves cutting down trees within ten to fifty yards of field or woodland border promoting shrub communities within a soft edge or passage zone between wood lands and fields in rural areas. People building inside borders should not cut useful trees for wild life like apple and other fruit trees and mast creators like oak.
In addition to enhanced wild life surroundings, land owners gain from this program by acquiring fire wood, increased crop production and because of less shading, better drying conditions for the fields in the spring time. Initially implemented for rabbits, pheasants and quail the program notably betters habitat for many non game animals too. Over the past few years researchers from California and Pennsylvania and other wild life instructors inspected the significance of border cuts to non game species.
Border cuts were discovered to support 40% more birds than uncut edges. Many declining edge and shrub associated species showed a liking for these cut edges. Beside the birds referred to at the beginning of the article other birds found more often in cut edges included blue winged warblers and common yellow throats.
Several species including eastern phoebes, willow flycatchers, brown thrashers, northern mockingbirds, eastern bluebirds, cedar waxwings, magnolia warblers, hooded warblers, chipping sparrows and grasshopper sparrows were found only in border cuts.
All told 68% of the bird species using border cut edges were shrub and edge associated species while uncut edges contained about 36% of such birds. The preferences of border cuts for shrub and edge dwelling birds appears to be due to the increased food and protection granted by shrub layers. The shrubs in cut edges serve birds with better level and erect cover that extends safekeeping from predators and produces seeds and attracts insects for food. Uncut edges characteristically have taller trees without a shrub under story. Hawks and owls usually sit along these edges and have moderate access to song birds and game birds using these shrubless areas. Any animal that is a predators like foxes and raccoons have increased access to these birds and nests in the uncut areas.
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