By Lisa Boonstoppel-Pot

A Broad-winged Hawk made the list of birds my recorder captured in the Stevenson Tract near Brussels during the Forest Bird Monitoring Program I took part in last year.
It was the only Broad-winged Hawk captured among 77 different species of birds that were identified across 37 sites in Huron County. I’m sure every volunteer got a little note from Watershed Monitoring Specialist Matthew Shetler detailing their “best finds” but that was mine and I am super chuffed about it.
He wrote that these hawks breed in large forests and usually nest near openings or bodies of water far from human disturbances. I actually felt this particular forest was noisy with nearby road traffic but perhaps, despite the noise, this particular hawk felt safe and chose it to rear its young.
I received the e-mail in late March detailing all the birds recorded at my site. In total, 59 birds were heard from 21 different species. The top bird was the Red-eyed Vireo and that tracks given that, overall, vireos were the most abundant species. The next most popular bird in the Stevenson Tract were American crows which are considered an urban bird. This study was tracking forest birds, denoted by an F on the chart and amongst the singers of the four mornings I recorded were Eastern Wood Pewees, Pine Warblers, Ovenbirds, Great-Crested Flycatchers, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Scarlet Tanagers, Red-breasted Nuthatches, Downy Woodpeckers, Brown Creepers and Northern Flickers.
I actually saw the Scarlet Tanager which was a thrill. 
The Forest Bird Monitoring program is being done as part of the Maitland Valley Conservation’s Authority watershed-wide health assessment of aquatic and terrestrial systems. Leading the charge is MVCA’s Watershed Ecologist, Erin Gouthro, who taught us how to use our recording devices and find our forest stations using latitude and longitude. Gouthro is also featured in this issue revealing the results of the Forest Health Study.
It was a fascinating exercise, honestly. The idea was to get to the forest early in the morning, set up the recorder and simply let it do its thing. We did not have to recognize the bird calls, thank goodness, because I would never recognize a Brown Creeper’s call or most others. However, I was turned onto the Merlin app by a friend. It was developed by the Cornell Lab, and I use its “Sound ID” feature all the time. Simply turn it on and it shows real-time suggestions for who is singing.
Gouthro cautions that the app can sometimes throw out some random bird names and is not 100 per cent accurate. However, it is a good way to tune your ear to bird calls you don’t pay attention to. 
Being in the forest on a wet spring morning was an opportunity to feed mosquitos, for sure. However, it was also a chance to get quiet, listen and be part of the forest in a meditative, connective way. It felt purposeful to contribute, in a tiny way, to understanding the health of our forests and bird populations.
Shetler noted that the bird community in the Stevenson tract was “fair” which he stated “is somewhat typical for forests in the Maitland Valley.”
That’s sad, really. When you read the results from the Forest Health Study, it makes sense. Most of our forests are also “fair” as they struggle with diversity, canopy heights, an overload of downed woody debris, disease and dominant ash regeneration. Why would there be good or excellent bird communities when more of our forests are getting torn down for agricultural lands and others are not managed for optimum health? It’s a hard balance – protecting wildlife and forests while also expanding acreage for farmland, which is also honourable and purposeful.
I don’t have a solution, other than to say watching housing developments eat up farmland with huge homes is hard to witness. As we house Ontarians in bigger and bigger homes, we steal land from both farmers and potential woodlots.
I can’t solve that problem but I can participate in the 2024 version of MVCA’s Forest Bird Monitoring program. They are looking for more volunteers so if you’re keen, contact Emily Shaw, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Assistant at foresthealth@mvca.on.ca if you’d like to take part too.◊