Work on Golden-Winged Warblers and Other Early Successional Birds

Minnesota’s forests provide critical breeding habitat for hundreds of resident and migrating bird species. Forest management provides an important opportunity to conserve and cultivate critical habitat for species of conservation concern including Golden-winged Warbler, Veery, and American Woodcock. These species have had significant population declines throughout their breeding ranges and all have a large portion of their breeding populations in Minnesota’s young forests.  We have been conducting research to determine characteristics of young forests and identify forest management actions that maximize breeding season productivity for these bird species; results of our on-going study along with breeding cycle habitat management recommendations will be discussed.