Wild Bird Wisdom

(electronic thud)

(mouse clicks)

[ETHAN TAPPER] My name's Ethan Tapper, and I'm a forester and an author, content creator from Vermont.

And we are here at my land, which I call Bear Island.

Bear Island is 175-acre forest that I bought in 2017.

It is an amazing forest.

Around 2020, which is around when, when the Merlin app came out and allowed us to identify birds by sound, I really got into birds.

And how it actually happened to me was that I'd always been interested in birds, but until that app came out, I was usually alone in the woods.

I didn't have a birder there to, like, tell me what bird was singing, and so it was very difficult to learn.

You know, I just wasn't sure that that bird that someone had told me sounds like this was actually the bird I heard singing in the woods.

But then when the app came out, suddenly I was able to be kind of birding all the time.

And what happened to me that got me really into it was that I started doing this forest management project on this community forest that was a birding hotspot, and that was really important to me to communicate with folks why I wanted to do this project and how it was gonna improve the health and the resilience of the forest and how it was gonna create all these new habitats.

And so I said, "Well, jeez, I guess we should think about how to communicate the value of this forest management we're kind of in terms of birds." So we had the Merlin bird ID app, which allowed me to go out there and see what birds were singing.

At the same time, in Vermont and New York, there was this Audubon program for foresters.

And I said, 'Well, I guess I better sign up for that program.' And, you know, it ended up doing all these classes and learning all about the different ways that we as foresters can improve habitat for birds.

And sure enough, one thing led to another And I just became a birder.

So one of the things that's amazing about birds is that they can model all of these different qualities that we need in our forest.

So there are birds that require these dense and diverse understories, birds that require mature forests with more of a closed canopy, birds that require canopy gaps, birds that require dead wood, birds that require all of these different habitat conditions at different times of the year and for different purposes.

And so when we're managing for forests that are diverse and resilient, which is something that we wanna do for all these other reasons, we're also managing for rich habitat for a full complement of our native bird species.

And so sometimes it's easier to understand and to explain the value of forest management and the way that we care for our forests in terms of birds rather than in terms of these, you know, more sort of hard to wrap our heads around qualities, like, you know, forest resilience and adaptability.

So over the last seven years, one of the amazing things as I've watched this forest heal is seeing all of these different bird species return here.

And to me what they really are telling me is that this forest is becoming more diverse and more complex and healthier and more rich with life.

(birds chirping)