Surveys seek to define status of night birds

ALBANY - On a warm, moonlit night in the Albany Pine Bush Preserve, a group of biologists listened at the foot of a grassy dune for the lilting, three-note song of a once-common nightbird that has now become rare.

“We were pretty excited to hear the whippoorwill here again,” said Neil Gifford, conservation director of the preserve. “It had been 13 years since it was last heard around here.”

Gifford believes intensive work in recent years to restore the rare inland pine barrens to its historic state is responsible for the return of the whippoorwill and other native grass- and shrubland species, including the endangered Karner Blue Butterfly and birds such as Pine Warbler, Prairie Warbler, Indigo Bunting and American Woodcock.