Scattered across the meadow are birdhouses, placed atop metal posts and sitting just above the height of the tall grasses. These wooden boxes make ideal nesting places for grassland-dependent species like Eastern Bluebird and Tree Swallow, and both can often be found raising their broods here. 

Tree Swallows are slim birds with long pointed wings. They have iridescent greenish-blue feathers on their backs and they’re white underneath from the chin down. This type of coloration—dark on top and light on the bottom—is called countershading. It makes a bird almost invisible to predators who might be looking up at it from the ground or down at it from high in the air. The Tree Swallow’s call is a short, repetitive “chitter-chit, chitter-chit” sound. These insect-eaters can be found in open areas like meadows, marshes, and lakes.

Eastern Bluebird males have stunning royal blue heads, backs, and wings. They have a contrasting orange-brown breast, and the remainder of their lower belly is white. Female bluebirds have a more muted color; their blue looks more like a gray. Bluebirds suffered severe population declines in the early and mid-1900s due to competition for nesting spaces with invasive European Starlings and House Sparrows. But in a remarkable conservation success story, people all over started installing bluebird nest boxes—like those in this meadow—and bluebird populations recovered dramatically.

Unlike the box-nesters, Killdeers nest directly on the ground. They have a variety of adaptations to help protect their eggs from predators, including a broken-wing display where the adult bird behaves as if it has an injured wing, making it a tempting target and luring predators away from the nest. The Killdeer’s call sounds just like its name, “Killdeer! Kildeer! Killdeer!”. They have been seen running around the giant tarps that cover the ground in the knotweed patch near here. Listen for their calls as you move along the trail.

Reader: Devin Guilfoyle