The saltmarsh sparrow’s existence depends on the coastal marshes found from Virginia to Maine. Their decline reveals an ecosystem on the brink.
Bri Benvenuti, a technician with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, holds an adult saltmarsh sparrow. Benvenuti was surveying the bird's habitat on Monomoy Island in Chatham, Massachusettes on June 22, 2024. Monomoy Island is one of the few remaining intact salt marsh ecosystems in New England and provides a good idea of how these ecosystems are supposed to function.Crouching, Deirdre Robinson gingerly moves her hands around swirling tufts of grass, feeling for an increase in density.
In their habitat, floodwaters rise higher than the sparrows’ nests about once every 28 days. This 28-day window allows the female sparrows just enough time to build their nests, lay their three to five eggs, incubate them, and then feed and protect the nestlings until they leave the nest at nine or 10 days old, just before their nests are flooded. The timing is so tight that the nestlings often climb to safety in the vegetation above the nest to avoid drowning at the time of peak tidal height.
On June 24, 2021, Benvenuti sets up mist nests at the Rachael Carson National Wildlife Refuge salt marsh. The nets catch sparrows mid flight so researchers can more easily collect and record data on the birds. This refuge has the longest running dataset on the saltmarsh sparrow. To study whether these restoration efforts are working, University of Connecticut ecologist Chris Elphick and his team put transmitters on birds to track how they use these sediment mounds. They also look for nests to see if the birds are using restored areas and if they are successful.
The Nelson sparrow, a neighboring species, which nests slightly upriver, is less attuned to live in the salt marsh than the sparrow. Despite this difference, the birds are besotted with each other—transcending species to mate and hybridize naturally.By borrowing bits of DNA from the Nelson sparrow, its saltmarsh counterpart might be able to live farther upland. “It may allow an evolutionary spark for them to adapt,” says Logan Maxwell, research scientist at the University of New Hampshire.
Logan Maxwell, lab manager in the Kovach Lab at the University of New Hampshire, examines saltmarsh sparrow DNA. Nelson sparrow DNA may help the saltmarsh sparrow adapt to habitats upriver, but they may also lose some of the unique features that make them so successful at living along the shoreline.
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