Voiceover: The Florida grasshopper sparrow is a bird that's resident to Florida.
Right now we are conducting a three-year research project ...
... to try and figure out what some of the causes of decline are.
So...there are a lot of hypothesis about why the sparrow population might be declining.
Voiceover: One of the predominant things is loss of habitat.
Three Lakes Wildlife Management Area currently has ...
... the largest population. Erin: Ready?
When we're trying to capture an unbanded bird ...
... we usually arrive at the site before dawn.
Voiceover: We locate the bird if it is singing. Erin: There he is!
We approach the bird ... usually within 50 meters.
We set up a mist nest ...
... that's set into the ground with poles.
And then we use floridanus or pratensis long song recording ...
... to draw the bird closer to the net.
Erin: Is he in?
Man: Yeah!
We remove the bird from the net carefully ...
... and take it a little ways away where we have all of our banding supplies.
It's a beauty.
Voiceover: We mark the birds with color bands ...
... so that we will be able to identify them as individuals later.
We measure the bill, the depth, the length of the bill, the tarsis, the wing length ...
We check the bird for ectoparasites.
We also collect blood samples for DNA analyses.
We try to process the birds as quickly as possible ...
... to reduce the amount of handling stress.
As soon as we're done taking all these measurements ...
... we release the bird at the original site.
Florida grasshopper sparrows have very low nest success.
Voiceover: It may be only one in three nests are successful.
OK, when we're looking for nests, what we try to do is ...
... find the female that's associated with the territory.
Voiceover: Unfortunately, we haven't been able to find very many females.
We don't know if that's because there aren't very many females left in the population ...
... or if it just has to do with how cryptic they are.
Voiceover: Another method that we use for nest searching is ...
... just systematic walking through a bird's territory.
Where we carefully walk, scanning the ground for signs of a nest.
Their nests are very hard to find.
They're constructed out of dead grass.
And they're built with a dome.
So even if you're looking down on the nest ...
... you can't actually see any eggs or any indication that it is a nest.
If this was an active nest I would not be bringing anyone here to see it ...
... because it's a very sensitive thing.
If and when we do find nests ...
... we are careful to stay in the area only for a very short time.
Voiceover: We usually mark the nest location with a GPS unit...
... and place a few flags near the nest.
Not right on the nest, but just near it.
And then we back away as soon as possible to let the birds return ...
... and also avoid leaving our scent ...
... in the area that could attract mammal predators.
Voiceover: The reason that this bird is on the brink of extinction ...
... primarily has to do with the fact that so little Florida dry prairie exists.
The whole prairie ecosystem is maintained by fire.
And historically this fire would have been created after lightning strikes.
So the wildlife managers here, Steve Glass and Tina Hannon, burn the prairie ...
... in two year rotations to keep the habitat appropriate for grasshopper sparrows.
Controlled burning is really important for the sparrow.
It's probably one of the most important things that can be done ...
... to preserve the bird is to maintain regular burning cycles in the prairie.