Science & Nature
Grassland Birds Catch a Break: County Line Orchard in Northwest Indiana Won’t Mow Nesting Habitat Until After Breeding Season
County Line Orchard and its hayfield/overflow parking lot, photographed June 16. (Chicago Ornithological Society / X)
You’ve got to hand it to birds. Faced with a bunch of lemons in the form of diminished breeding habitat, they’re getting pretty good at making lemonade.
In Chicago, piping plovers are nesting on one of the city’s busiest lakefront beaches; a colony of black-crowned night herons is thriving in the tree canopy above Lincoln Park Zoo’s red wolf exhibit; and grassland birds — some of the fastest-declining species in North America — have taken a shine to a hayfield at County Line Orchard, a patch of land in Northwest Indiana that doubles as an overflow parking lot come fall’s busy apple-picking season.
But where the piping plovers and night herons have been embraced by the Chicago Park District and Lincoln Park Zoo — as well as a network of volunteers, ecologists and conservation organizations — the grassland birds haven’t found County Line Orchard’s ownership as welcoming.
A bobolink, with the male's distinctive plumage. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Midwest Region / Flickr Creative Commons)
At the height of breeding season, mowers have plowed through the field to harvest the hay, not only likely killing birds but disrupting survivors’ nesting chances, as well.
Two years ago, Ken Wysocki, former president of Chicago Ornithological Society and one of the founders of Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, reached out to the orchard, explained the situation and asked them to delay the mowing.
He received a response from an employee at Luke Oil (Luke Family of Brands, parent company of Luke Oil, bought the orchard in 2006), saying the company was environmentally friendly and would try to take the birds into account.
“Like two days later, they cut the field,” Wysocki said. “They didn't listen at all.... They just went ahead and cut it.”
Fast forward to June 2024 and Wysocki, who was out of town in summer 2023, saw the same scenario getting ready to play out again at the orchard’s field, with mowers poised to slice through the birds’ nesting area.
“I’m thinking, ‘I need to step up my game,’ because last time, they ignored me,” he said.
Some well-placed social media posts of Wysocki’s attracted the support of larger organizations, including Chicago Ornithological Society, whose members flooded the orchard with emails and phone calls urging them to spare the birds and put off mowing until later in the summer.
The orchard broke its silence June 13 with a Facebook post that stated, in part: “For the past twenty years, we have followed the same planting and harvesting cycles for these crops. These cycles and practices align with the other farmers in our community.”
(Facebook screenshot)
The post was deleted after receiving hundreds of negative comments.
In a seeming about-face, a day later, the Chicago Tribune quoted a biologist with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources as saying the mowing was on hold.
But in the absence of any official statement from the orchard or Luke Oil, Wysocki wasn’t ready to declare victory.
“I don’t take that as a commitment,” he said of the IDNR comment. “We’re in this weird nowhere land. Maybe we’ve won, maybe they’ll mow tomorrow.”
WTTW News contacted the orchard — currently closed for the season — and was told by a staff member that mowing had indeed been paused, but directed a reporter to Luke Oil’s corporate office for an official statement.
A message to corporate has not been answered but the company has used other proxies to share its intentions. Elected officials in Hobart and Porter County have reported on their own social media accounts that harvesting of the hayfield has been postponed until Aug. 1.
The issue has been settled, for summer 2024, at County Line Orchard, but for grassland birds and other endangered wildlife, the struggle isn’t over. This dust-up has implications that stretch far beyond our corner of the Midwest.
Wysocki grew up in Blue Island and moved to Hobart a decade ago.
He drives past the orchard daily, and regularly spots dickcissels, eastern meadowlarks, savannah sparrows and even elusive bobolinks fluttering around the hayfield.
“I don’t see bobolinks anywhere else. These birds aren’t around in big numbers ... I don’t know why they’re here,” said Wysocki. “It’s just such a weird situation. It’s this weird ecological spot where you can have anything (bird-wise) show up in there.”
The hayfield is so popular, he’s entered it as a neighborhood birding hot spot on the eBird platform.
Before grasslands were lost to development and agriculture, birds like bobolinks would have nested in damp meadows or prairies with dense grasses and low bushes. In states including Indiana and Illinois, so much of that original habitat has been lost — grasslands are often dubbed Earth’s most endangered ecosystem — cultivated hayfields have become the bobolink’s next best option, according to the National Audubon Society.
The problem is, the prime season for harvesting hay is June — that’s when its protein content is at its highest, making it of greatest value to cattle — which is also the precise time when grassland birds are nesting. Solutions vary but frequently boil down to relying on a landowner’s good will.
It’s a conflict that isn’t unique to County Line Orchard. Farmers and conservationists across the country and around the globe are grappling with the twin demands of feeding the planet’s ever-growing population of humans while trying to address an increasingly dire biodiversity crisis.
At the macro level, the European Union just passed the landmark Nature Restoration Law; locally, a group of grassland birds can attempt to reproduce without human interference.
Wysocki never expected to find himself on the front line of this global debate.
“It’s been an interesting week out here in the hinterlands,” he laughed.
Contact Patty Wetli: @pattywetli | (773) 509-5623 | [email protected]
