DEL.ICIO.USWILD GEORGIA
Native grass gets intervention at Panola Mountain
For The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Last weekend found several of us bird lovers, toting pillowcases and burlap bags, moving slowly through chest-high grass in old fields and piney woods in Panola Mountain Conservation Park in Henry County and Sprewell Bluff State Park in Upson County.
We were diligently stripping the seeds from ripened, golden brown native grasses and sedges — Indian grass, big and little bluestems, brown sedge and others — growing wild in those places. We deposited our harvest in the pillowcases and bags.
CHARLES SEABROOK/Special
Ellen Corrie gathers seed to be sown in spring at varying locales. Less than 1 percent of Georgia native grasslands survive.
CHARLES SEABROOK/Special
Elaine Nash holds a stem of Indian grass with ripe seed to show volunteers what to harvest at Panola Mountain Conservation Park. The seeds will be used in a restoration program.
“The only way to gather them is by hand,” instructed Nathan Klaus of the state Department of Natural Resources, one of our leaders.
The seeds will be sown by hand next spring at certain other locales — including Etowah Indian Mounds Historic Site in Bartow County — by DNR wildlife managers in an effort to restore native grasslands in Georgia.
The effort is for the birds — specifically, grassland bird species such as sparrows, eastern meadowlarks, bobolinks, loggerhead shrikes, bobwhite quail and northern harriers, or “sparrow hawks.” Populations of those species have plummeted in Georgia and elsewhere in recent decades as grasslands — meadows, old fields, old pastures, savannahs and the like — have been chewed up by development or disappeared for other reasons.
A recent survey found that nesting pairs of American kestrels have become “quite uncommon” in Georgia due, in large part, to the loss of grassland habitat.
Eastern meadowlarks, common years ago, have declined to the point where they are rarely seen now during Atlanta Audubon Society Christmas Bird Counts. Sparrows also used to be found in abundance on the counts, but their numbers have declined substantially.
Charlie Muise, director of the Audubon Society’s Important Bird Area program, told us that the seeds we were collecting “are unique” – they are what botanists call “native phenotypes,” meaning that not only are the species native to Georgia, they are actually direct descendants of the grasses that were here hundreds of years ago.
“They are the plants that our grassland birds evolved with,” said Muise, who lives in Lamar County.
Klaus told us that native grasslands, ranging in size from less than an acre to several hundred acres, dotted the Southeast when Europeans first arrived. “I’d say that all of Georgia had native grasses,” he said. Moreover, probably any woodland that was somewhat open had a grassy understory, usually due to occasional fires that cleared out competing vegetation, he said.
The grassy woodlands included post oak woodlands and open pine woodlands and savannahs. Sprewell Bluff State Park harbors the best remaining example of one type of grassy woodland — a longleaf pine savannah with an understory of bluestem grasses and Indian grass.
In addition to losing grasslands to development, the suppression of fires also contributed to their loss. Without occasional fires, invasive exotic plants began to out-compete native grasses until they were able to hang on only in pockets. “Now, less than 1 percent of Georgia’s native grasslands survive,” Klaus said.
Other leaders in Georgia’s grassland restoration project include naturalist Elaine Nash of Conyers and Phil Delestrez, manager at Sprewell Bluff.
Restoration
Delestrez is given most of the credit for starting the native grassland restoration. When he was park naturalist at Panola about five years ago, “he’d pull off along the roadside and gather the seeds of native grasses he saw growing there,” Klaus said.
Delestrez began sowing small plots at Panola with the native seeds. Now, several acres of the park are covered by the grasses and the acreage is increasing.
As a result, grassland birds are returning. “We had some flocks of meadowlarks here this morning,” Klaus said before we began our seed collecting at Panola last weekend. “I haven’t seen that before.”
Also, Muise, a federally licensed bird-bander, spent most of the morning banding birds in a field at Panola. He and his helpers banded 73 birds in about three hours. Sixty-nine of them were sparrows representing seven species that thrive in grasslands. The sparrow species included song, swamp, field, savannah, chipping, white crowned and white-throated sparrows. A vesper sparrow was heard but not banded.
“Most birdwatchers would be happy if they saw that many sparrows in an entire day, but we banded that many in a few hours,” Muise said.
In the sky
The annual Leonid meteor shower will be visible tonight through Thursday, with a peak of about 15 meteors per hour on Monday night, says David Dundee, astronomer with the Northwest Georgia Science Museum. Look to the east from about 2 a.m. until dawn. Unfortunately, the moon’s light may interfere with observing the fainter meteors.
The moon will be last quarter on Wednesday night. It will rise about midnight and set midday. Venus shines brightly in the west just after sunset and sets in the west about two hours later. Jupiter is high in the southwest just after dark and sets in the west before midnight.
Saturn rises out of the east just before sunrise and appears near the moon Friday morning. Mars and Mercury are not easily observed right now.
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