Old Lyme – Crossing a rustic footbridge over a small stream into a thicket of sweet pepper bush, alder and other native shrubs, Patrick Comins scanned above for the bird making the rapid, single note call he heard in the distance.

“I hear a white-breasted nuthatch,” said Comins, director of bird conservation for Audubon Connecticut. “I would also expect there’d be vireo and wood thrush and black-and-white warbler here.”

Comins and Eric Hansen, a partner with the forestry consulting firm Ferrucci & Walicki of Middlefield, hiked the main trail of the Old Lyme Land Trust’s Hoffman-Matthiessen-DeGerenday Preserve on Monday with land trust President Christina Clayton as part of a unique habitat improvement project.

“The main focus is to help landowners see their woods through the eyes of birds and bird habitat,” Hansen told Clayton as they began their trek, clipboards, cameras and binoculars in hand, through the 40-acre parcel.

Called the Forest Bird Initiative, the project, now in the second year of its three-year run, is funded by about $130,000 in grants from the North East State Foresters Association and the U.S. Forest Service. Working with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, project foresters have thus far assessed 60 forests owned by towns, land trusts and private individuals — owners of about half of the state’s 1.8 million treed acres — to provide recommendations for making the parcels more hospitable to native birds. When the project concludes next year, 115 properties will have been surveyed.

“To the extent we can improve this parcel for forest birds, we’d love to do that,” said Clayton, adding that the parcel, which includes marshes along the Mill River, is connected to another 50-acre preserve. “Together, there’s a bird corridor here.”

The project, Comins explained, teaches landowners how to diversify their habitats, offering expertise and plans at no cost that owners can use to obtain grants for habitat work from the Natural Resources Conservation Service or other sources.

“Uniformity is part of the problem in Connecticut,” he said. “We’ve become a state of homogenous middle-aged forests.”

To create habitat for a variety of species, he and Hansen might recommend subtle changes, or something more ambitious. That could involve thinning thick tree stands to create “gaps” where scarlet tanager and great-crested flycatchers might find a home as the forest regenerates, or ridding an area of invasive plants to foster growth of native shrubs that provide both berries for food and cover for nests.

“There’s no set recipe for every piece of land,” he said.

In the Hoffman-Matthiessen-DeGerenday Preserve, Hansen talked about how “snags” — dead standing trees that provide a lunchbox of insects for several bird species — and native “soft mast” — berry-producing shrubs such as wild blueberry and viburnum and spicebush — benefit birds. He also explained the importance of having three healthy tiers of understory, mid-story and overstory for different species that nest in each of these areas.

As Hansen pointed to a thicket of fallen limbs, where different species find shelter and insects, Comins spotted evidence of its value to birds.

“There are two eastern phoebes there,” he said, pointing to the gray-and-white birds perching on one of the limbs. A few hundred yards further on the trail, he identified the call of a song sparrow and a house wren.

In addition to the habitat recommendations and long-term plans, the project also provides forest owners with “formalized bird surveys” of their property, Comins said.

“This project gives us a better understanding of just how important private lands are to bird habitat in Connecticut,” he said. “And it increases awareness of the landowners, and teaches them that it’s OK to manage their forests. It gives them a whole new reason to fall in love with their property.”

j.benson@theday.com

Twitter: @BensonJudy