Saltmarsh Sparrow (Ammodramus caudacutus) at Great Bay Boulevard Wildlife Management Area – credit, Brian Henderson CC 2.0. via Flickr

This is a saltmarsh sparrow, an Endangered species of bird that builds its nest in its eponymous habitat.

A collaboration of citizen scientists working in Jacob’s Point salt marsh in Rhode Island is attempting to save the animal—which they believe will go extinct by mid-century—from drowning in the marsh.

In a state of nature untouched by man, these birds would build their nests in higher-elevation marshes where the threat of flooding was rare. But coastal development over the last 200 years has seen most of the higher-lying marsh cleared, forcing the sparrows to move to lower-lying marshes like Jacob’s Point that are routinely flooded by high tides.

The citizen scientists, under the moniker Needle in a Haystack Society, have for the last 10 years conducted a monitoring/intervention project in Jacob’s Point that has seen them floodproof the sparrows’ nests.

By placing a rigid coffee filter under their conical nests of intricately woven grass, the whole thing, eggs or chicks and all, rises and floats until the high tide or flood recedes. Not everyone they’ve contacted about the project are enthusiastic about it, with one expert pointing out how sensitive the mother sparrows are to signs of nest tampering.

But only half of the Haystack Society’s work is intervening. The other half is monitoring, and unfortunately that has involved capturing footage of nests and chicks being drowned by both floods and the highest tides.

Featured in a documentary from the Guardian newspaper in England, the society have gathered findings that remain unpublished which show the coffee filter “arks” prevent nests from drowning, in all but 8% of instances, and not a single parent has abandoned a nest after the ark was installed.

By contrast, unsecured nests drowned 18% of the time during extreme tides.

The saltmarsh sparrow sits on something like a waitlist for Endangered Species Act protections, but the society is worried that after 9 years on the waitlist, the potential protections will come too late to save the bird.

SALT MARSHES: There’s a Salt Marsh on the East Coast Where You Can See More Than 250 Species of Birds

Although, a previous critic of the society’s interventions, evolutionary biologist Chris Elphick at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, recently co-authored a paper in which he and his team presented findings which showed the decline in the saltmarsh sparrow had slowed, and the population actually increased.

The paper also concluded that sea-level rise, though seemingly more inevitable and apocalyptic than other factors like road density and habitat integrity, was not as good a predictor for the long-term population trends of coastal birds than the latter two factors.

MORE ENDANGERED BIRDS: First Egg Laid in the Wild by Guam Kingfishers in 40 Years–Hanging on to Survival Thousands of Miles from Home

In that sense, better habitat protections—like those that might prevail from an Endangered Species Act listing—could yet save this extremely specialized songbird from singing shanties in Davy Jones’ Locker.

And if that were the case, then the dozens of chicks who were made safe from rising tides by the coffee filter arks would be able to carry on building their curious nests long into the future, with the citizen scientists of the Needle in a Haystack Society to thank for it.

SHARE This Songbird Saga Up In Rhode Island’s Salt Marshes On Social Media…