Loss Of Summerfallow Key

The loss of summerfallow is a key piece in the pintail productivity puzzle. In the 1970s, when some 30 to 50 per cent of the land was summerfallowed in any one year, the landscape looked and functioned very differently for pintails. Summerfallow is typically left idle for most of the summer, except that it is tilled to control weeds. The tillage operation usually does not occur until all other land is seeded and 30 years ago, when smaller farming equipment prevailed, this might not happen until late May or early June. Therefore, pintails winging their way back to the prairies in the ’70s were faced with a landscape that resembled a patchwork quilt of quarter sections that were primarily black dirt from being summerfallowed the year before, and soon-to-be-summerfallowed quarter sections with stubble still standing. Pintails, more than any other duck, will nest in cropland. When faced with this landscape, many of the birds would choose to nest in the available stubble, destined for fallow that year. But because pintails nest very early in the spring, there was a good chance that these nests in summerfallow might hatch before cultivation of that field later in spring.

These days, summerfallow has fallen out of favour, largely due to concerns over soil erosion and the prevalence of nitrogen fertilizer, and most cropland is planted every year. When a northward-bound pintail hen arrives, she is faced with a sea of standing crop stubble, all of which looks pretty good for nesting. Unbeknownst to the hen, most of this stubble is slated for crop production this year, and there is a pretty good chance that if her nest escapes the notice of local predators, the seed drill won't miss it. Nearly 13 million acres of summerfallow have been converted to annual cropping in Prairie Canada since the 1970s, a massive change in land use that likely has had devastating effects on pintails.

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