It was seven in the morning and the sun was barely peaking through the clouds. The snow was unbearably loud as we stomped through the crisp, icy layer. I barely heard her ask me, "Did you hear that?"

I heard nothing. "That's a raven in the distance," she continued. She could hear the faintest song of a raven, and I could only hear the deafening noises of my snowshoes breaking through the snow. We had only walked a couple of minutes, and I was already out of breath. She turned around and asked me if I was OK. I smiled and replied, "I'm doing good," even though I really could have used a break. So she continued trucking up the hill, making it look so easy, as I dragged behind. The snow was deep, chopped tree trunks were barely peaking through the snow. We stopped in the middle of the trail, so I could catch my breath.

Photo by Amy Sanger When forests are cut, birds lose their home.

 

"I ended up in the research by default," explained Cherise Bailey. I could tell she was sleep deprived. The bags under the eyes proved it. "But then I was excited to be out in the woods. It makes me excited to know that the birds are still there, after a while you get to know them. It's a happy familiar." A smile then grew across her face, and her eyes lit up. Bailey really was in tune with the birds.

Bailey, who is studying for her Masters in Environmental Science at Plattsburgh State University, is researching the wintering habitats of forest birds in the Adirondack State Park. She is studying how different types of cuts used on trees affect the bird population. Bailey's undergraduate studies have mainly involved plants, so when she began this research in January, she had a lot of learning to do.

Bailey didn't know that much about birds when she began her research. She credits her bird knowledge to a fellow worker at the Visitor's Center in the park. When Bailey would hear a bird that she didn't recognize, she would take note of it and run back to the center and say to her colleague, a bird guide, "OK, there was this little bird out there, it was pink, and it sounded sort of like this." Bailey let out a soft laugh and chuckled. "Thank god we had a bird guide."

Working 30 hours-a-week and spending 10 hours doing research, plus schoolwork, Bailey has no time to relax. She let out a yawn and said, "I didn't expect it to be easy." As we continued walking through the snow, she let out a groan. I asked her what was wrong. "You don't really anticipate going into this how much time it really takes," she answered as she stopped, looked down and kicked some snow off her snowshoe. Bailey was silent, but only for a second. A smile quickly appeared and she said, "but I enjoy what I am doing. There are mornings I am so excited to be out there." With enthusiasm increasing both in her tone of voice and her walking pace, we quickly arrived to our first stop.

"Here we are, the clear-cut block." I looked around. There was nothing on the block, with the exception of an old tree trunk here and there. Bailey is comparing three different types of tree cuts in the Adirondacks--clear-cut, shelter wood, and two-age cut--to forest that has never been logged. Each type of cut is on its own five-acre plot of land called a block. The clear-cut block contains no trees or underbrush--it is bare. This is the kind of cut that is most likely to have the least bird population because there is nowhere for the birds to live.

In the shelter wood block, the trees were cut for the purpose of trying to harvest a certain type of tree. For example, there are approximately 40 trees of the same species in the shelter wood block, typically American beech and yellow birch trees. The shelter wood is similar to the clear cut, because it has no underbrush; so it is expected that this too would have a low bird population, as Bailey had discovered.

The block of two-age cuts contains patches of land without trees and patches thick with trees and underbrush, similar to unlogged forest.

Bailey is basically trying to prove that if a person is managing a forest with animals in mind, then they won't hack down thousands of trees to create a clear cut, which leaves little habitat for birds.

According to Plattsburgh State University's Director of the Center for Earth and Environmental Science, Bill Ehmann, Bailey's research is different from all other research studying bird population in deforestation areas because Bailey is performing her research in the winter. "I couldn't figure out why that was, that all research was done in the summer, until I snowshoe for a couple weeks," Bailey joked.

Within a half-hour to four hours after sunrise, Bailey snowshoes to each block. This morning was no different. We began snowshoeing at 7:15, and by 8:00 we had arrived at the first block, the clear-cut. At each block there are eight different plots. Out of these eight plots, Bailey would choose three of them and sit at each one for seven minutes.

Once we arrived at the clear-cut, we trekked up a little hill and stood at the first plot. A little stick, with an orange strip around the top, stood up out of the ground to mark her spot. I looked around and saw snowcapped mountains to the south of us and pine trees to the north. After Bailey sat at this marker for seven minutes, keeping track of what birds she heard and saw in that plot and the time she sees them at, she gets up and moves to the next plot and then the next.

When we walked around to each plot on the five acres of clear-cut, we snowshoed across the trail to the shelter wood. Following the same procedure, Bailey would sit at three plots for seven minutes and then we continued walking downhill to the two-age cut and on down the path to the control block. Dedicated to her research, Bailey would walk out to her field lab in temperatures as low as negative 10 degrees Fahrenheit, when her eyelids would literally freeze shut.

At first, Bailey couldn't see the birds, she could only hear them. She had a real hard time finding them with binoculars because they were hiding in the trees. The first time she ever saw a chickadee, it flew right by her shoulder and landed about three feet in front of her and sat for the longest time, just watching her.

"It was great," Bailey said as she clapped her hands. "I was so discouraged at that point because I hadn't seen anything, and I think, had he not appeared, I probably wouldn't have," she pauses to laugh and continues, "I probably wouldn't have been as happy to get up so early in the morning. He eased the frustration and the reluctance to keep doing it."

Bailey, who comes from a string of science-oriented people, grew up in Saranac Lake. After graduating high school she received her Bachelor's degree in Plant Science at Cornell University, and then entered the Master's program at Plattsburgh State. As a result of coming from a family of scientists, it is pretty much implied that she go for her PhD, and she does plan to do so after graduating in May 2003. She is hoping to return to Cornell, where she'll study to get her PhD. "If I wasn't going to leave the Plattsburgh area, I'd stay here in a heartbeat."

As we continued walking back to the Visitor's Center, I heard Bailey yell to me over the crunching noises of the snow, "Would you like to see the beaver dams before you leave?" Even though I was exhausted, I was up for taking a detour. We stepped off the trampled trail, and I followed Bailey as we walked the less traveled path. Bailey suddenly stopped in front of me and I almost ran into her. She then whispered a familiar question. "Did you hear that?" she asked.

Once again, I heard nothing. But Bailey immediately pointed out that it was a raven—it was nesting northeast of us. And again, Bailey heard the faintest song.

 

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