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Chestnuts and Warblers
A tree’s demise created an opportunity for a bird
© Bettina Arrigoni / FCC
The Golden-winged Warbler builds its nest in thickets beneath an open sky, which was a rare habitat in the old-growth forests of eastern North America. But the chestnut blight at the turn of the 20th century wiped out billions of trees, an estimated one fourth of the forest in Appalachia. And the dead trees created openings in the canopy where thickets grew, coinciding with the peak of the Golden-winged Warbler population.
Today's show brought to you by the Bobolink Foundation.
BirdNote®
Chestnuts and Warblers
Written by Rick Wright
This is BirdNote.
[Golden-winged Warbler, ML 527190 throughout]
Unlike some of its relatives, the buzzy-voiced Golden-winged Warbler steers clear of dense forests, gravitating instead toward thickets beneath an open sky.
In a bitter irony, a hundred years ago the Golden-winged Warbler enjoyed a high point in its population history — thanks to the devastation of another species.
[Golden-winged Warbler, ML 527190]
The chestnut blight arrived in the United States in 1904, and by 1940 most mature chestnut trees had been wiped out by the disease. The loss was especially vast in the Appalachians, where the American chestnut made up a quarter of the entire forest canopy.
The sudden death of all those forest giants created sunny openings for brambles and grape thickets to take hold — perfect nesting sites for Golden-winged Warblers.
Today, the bird’s habitat is under threat as reforestation and development replace thickets. In the easternmost parts of its shrinking range, the tiny warbler has been relegated to stretches of underbrush that often sprout up around poorly maintained power lines and other forgotten areas.
[Golden-winged Warbler, ML 527190]
For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.
Today’s show brought to you by the Bobolink Foundation.
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Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Golden-winged Warbler, ML 527190, recorded by Wil Hershberger.
Producer: John Kessler
Production Manager: Allison Wilson
Editor: Ashley Ahearn
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
BirdNote’s theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2020 BirdNote September 2020 Narrator: Michael Stein
ID#: GWWA-01-2020-09-08 GWWA-01
Rick Wright
Writer
