North Dakota Field Station Records ---

The North Dakota Field Station was established in 1989 on the campus of North Dakota State University (NDSU) in Fargo. However, the station’s research programs on blackbird ecology and behavior in relation to sunflowers were initiated at NDSU in 1979. In 1996, the field station was relocated to Bismarck, ND, and co-located with the North Dakota Wildlife Services operations program in 1997. In addition to the office building, the field station had a research laboratory and outdoor aviary for testing wild birds. In 2014, the Field Station was relocated back to the NDSU campus in Fargo.

George M. Linz served as the North Dakota Field Station leader from 1989 until 2015 and authored numerous papers on the ecology and management of blackbirds in relation to sunflower. Under his leadership, the field station focused on managing the conflict between sunflower producers and birds by evaluating the effectiveness of methods including frightening devices, wildlife repellents, wetland management, and decoy crops.

In 1989, researchers at the station investigated the feeding habits of adult male red-winged blackbirds, yellow-headed blackbirds, and common grackles in North Dakota. They compared the diets among the three species in crop and noncrop habitats and analyzed temporal dietary variation. In 1991, in cooperation with researchers at NDSU, field staff participated in a survey of sunflower growers in ND and asked respondents to identify major production problems they encountered, insect problems, percent of bird damage and bird species causing the damage, pesticides used, use of herbicides, and use of other pest management practices.

During the early 1990s, researchers determined that the presence of dense cattail marshes is the most important environmental factor influencing levels of sunflower damage by blackbirds. As a result, they evaluated the effectiveness of aerially spraying wetlands with glyphosate herbicide to fragment dense cattail stands used by roosting blackbirds. The goal of the project was to find a method to disrupt the critical habitat link between blackbird damage to sunflowers and nearby cattail-dominated wetlands. Scientists at the ND Field Station studied types of spray patterns, percent basin coverage, environmental impacts, as well as glyphosate concentrations and volumes. In the mid-1990s, biologists at the field station developed a population and economic model to evaluate whether a spring DRC-1339-treated grain baiting program would be cost-effective in decreasing blackbird depredations of sunflower crops. In the early 2000s, scientists at the North Dakota Field Station studied the relationship between blackbird populations, land cover, and climate.