Backyard Birding: Sharing the Beach with Shorebirds

By Lee Halasz

Lee Halasz is a native of Australia and is a former conservation professional with the Queensland State Government. He and his family now reside in western Massachusetts, and he volunteered his time with us in 2015. This spring, we feature a series of bird stories Lee wrote to celebrate #birdyear. 

Will you be at the beach this summer? Keep an eye out for breeding shorebirds.

Piping plover and chicks (Credit: Kaiti Titherington/USFWS)

The beach is a fantastic place to be. All year round it is a fun and inspiring element of our landscape, and part of that enjoyment comes from being around distinctive coastal birds.

Most of us only go the beach in summer, when we can enjoy the weather and water to relax and have fun. Summer is also an important time for many shorebirds; it is when they come to Northeast beaches to breed.

The beach is a thin strip of naturally precarious habitat in a dynamic environment. It is subject to the power of waves and wind, and extremes of temperature. Despite these challenges, this is where beach-nesting shorebirds have successfully bred through time.

The increased use of beaches by humans has introduced a new variable. The Northeast becomes home to more people every year, and over time society has become more affluent and gained greater freedom to enjoy coastal areas. These patterns have resulted in greater impacts on coastal environments and coastal wildlife, and consequently we need to take actions to ensure that beaches remain a safe place for shorebirds.

Beachgoers can drastically reduce the breeding success of beach-nesting shorebirds. The eggs and chicks are well camouflaged and can unknowingly be crushed by people walking above the high tide line. Also, if adults are flushed from the nest, chicks and eggs can suffer heat stress without the protective shading offered by the parents, and unattended eggs and chicks can be destroyed and eaten by predators.

There are some great shorebird recovery success stories. In Massachusetts, targeted actions have seen piping plover populations bounce back dramatically in recent decades, and American oystercatcher populations are recovering impressively since returning to the Northeast in the last half century.

American Oystercatcher chicks (Credit: Stephanie Koch/USFWS)

Some of this success is attributable to programs like the Atlantic Flyway Shorebird Initiative that increase the focus on shorebird conservation. For example, many of the contributing partners organize summer beach stewards who raise awareness of nesting shorebirds, educate people about them, monitor nests, and notify authorities if protective action is needed.

How You Can Help

There are things all beachgoers can do to minimize their impact on breeding shorebirds:

• Have a carry-in carry-out policy: Trash left on beaches can attract nest predators.
• Don’t feed gulls: While it may be fun and seems harmless, gulls can eat shorebird eggs and chicks.
• Walk your dog on a leash: Dogs love to chase and catch wildlife, including shorebirds, and just the stress of being chased, especially repeatedly, can lead to eggs and chicks being abandoned.
• Respect wildlife protection signs: Please keep out of posted nesting areas.
• Be aware of wildlife: If birds are calling loudly around you, dive-bombing you, or feigning injury, there are probably nests nearby. Please back away.

Perhaps the most important thing anyone can do is to recognize that shorebirds live and breed on the same beaches that people enjoy.

Summer is coming. Enjoy it, but please enjoy and respect the shorebirds also.

Terns at sunset on Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge (Credit: USFWS)

Restoring Stone Harbor for birds and community

A piping plover at Stone Harbor Point with dunlins in the background. Photo from Creative Commons, Flickr user John Beetham.

Larry Niles holding two red knots. Photo courtesy of his blog, arubewithaview.com.

Today we’re sharing updates from our partners NJ Audubon and Larry Niles, a private wildlife biologist blogging on the ongoing Stone Harbor Point project to restore 20 acres of habitat for piping plovers, American oystercatchers, red knots and other shorebirds.

NJ Audubon received a grant through National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Hurricane Sandy Coastal Resiliency Competitive Grant Program for the project, which is also supported by our agency, the Wetlands Institute, Conserve Wildlife Foundation, NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife, Richard Stockton College of NJ Coastal Research Center, and the Borough of Stone Harbor.

At long last, the work began last Wednesday, when the first equipment slowly made its way to the Stone Harbor Point site. The point helps protect the Borough from damaging coastal storms and sea level rise, and the project will use local sand harvesting (no dredging or trucking in sand) to elevate and improve habitat quality for coastal birds and to reduce coastal flooding.

Boomer Heun, the supervising contractor and operator of every machine out here, stands in front of a bulldozer. Photo courtesy NJ Audubon/Larry Niles

Last week, the team finished one of the three nesting and roosting habitats for piping plovers, oystercatchers, least terns and black skimmers. The habitat areas are about 2 to 3 feet above the surrounding area, keeping them safe from the infrequent but inevitable high tides that sweep the point during bad winds storms or New and Full moon tides. These floods have contributed to a failure of Stone Harbor nesting bird population.

The same elevated areas will provide roosting habitat for shorebirds that migrant through the area in the fall and the spring migrants that feed on horseshoe crab eggs on Delaware Bay. It’s not well known that, at times, most of the shorebirds, including the red knot, fly to Stone Harbor Point to find roosting habitat safe from the ground predators that roam throughout the Delaware Bay beaches and marsh at night. In some years the entire population of rufa red knots roost on Stone Harbor Point. The roosts have failed recently during the same extraordinary tides that destroy nests. Our work will help both groups of birds.

American oystercatchers at Stone Harbor Point. Photo from Creative Commons, Flickr user John Beetham.

This part of the project aims to help people, too. As part of our team’s commitment to the community of Stone Harbor, we will fortify natural dunes that protect the southernmost part of the town. Nearly a quarter of all the sand we harvest from our borrow site at the tip of the point will be used to increase the height and width of an important dune that forms the best defense of the town’s south face. It’s our sincere hope this project will help this town face the dangers of coastal storms.

The trucks have been moving about 3,000 to 4,000 cubic yards per day! Photo courtesy NJ Audubon/Larry Niles

Even though the cold wind makes life difficult and continues to wear away at the habitat areas, it also helps. The deep freeze helps firm the sand making it more resistant to the punishing winds. The frozen beach also provide firm footing for the all terrain dump trucks. With loads of over 30 tons, a hard frozen sand roadway improves fuel efficiency by 50% and saves valuable time.

Keep up with the project at NJ Audubon’s site!

Climate change and the future of Maine’s wildlife

Today you’re hearing from Bob Houston, a biologist and GIS specialist in our Gulf of Maine Coastal Program. He’s one of the authors of the report, Climate Change and Biodiversity in Maine, released today. The report identifies 168 vulnerable species of fish, plants, birds and other wildlife that could experience large range shifts and population declines in Maine as a result of climate change by 2100.

Photo courtesy of Bob.

What will happen to the animals, plants and habitats for which we work so hard to protect? Will their environment change so much in the coming century that they will face hardships they can’t tolerate?

These and other questions were on my mind as I sat at a table with other scientists to discuss the future of ducks, seabirds, shorebirds and other bird species.

I have been very lucky to be a part of Maine’s Beginning with Habitat team from its early beginnings. The partnership, which includes state and local agencies and non-government organizations, was formed to share important information about plant and animal habitats with towns and land trusts to inform decisions about town planning and open space conservation.

The program has been a great success. But now we wrestled with questions about climate change and sea-level rise: How would it affect the plants and animals that are the focus of the Beginning with Habitat program? What will happen when the temperatures increase, rainfall and snowfall patterns change, non-native pests and plants expand their invasion, and the sea rises?

A sub-team of the partnership was formed to try to answer these questions and investigate the impact of climate change on Maine’s priority plants, animals and habitats. Led by Andrew Whitman of Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, the team decided to rely on the expert opinion of many scientists throughout Maine and the Northeast.

Sea-level rise may reduce nesting habitat for seabirds, especially tern species like the common tern pictured here. Credit: Amanda Boyd/USFWS

The cold-water habitats of endangered Atlantic salmon are predicted to decline in the region as air temperatures warm and, subsequently, water temperatures increase. Credit: E. Peter Steenstra/USFWS

The Blanding’s turtle is sensitive to declines in water levels, which increases the isolation of wetlands and may affect the turtle’s ability to survive through winters. Credit: Keith Shannon/USFWS

American oystercatchers (pictured) and piping plovers breed in marine habitats that are vulnerable to sea-level rise. Credit: USFWS

Climate change may extensively reduce the red knot’s Arctic breeding habitat and the roosting habitats the knot uses as it migrates south along the eastern U.S. Credit: Greg Breese/USFWS

Canada lynx have evolved to have a competitive edge in deep snow habitats. Without the snow, bobcats may out-compete them. Credit: James Weliver/USFWS

More than 100 scientists contributed their expert knowledge and opinions to the process through an in-depth online survey and an intensive one-day workshop. It was at this one-day workshop that I found myself at a table with other wildlife biologists who have spent their lives researching and conserving all types of birds and their habitats.

As other groups discussed plants, fish, mammals, amphibians and reptiles and invertebrates (such as beetles and dragonflies), our group discussed the future of birds. I quickly found that we had no definite answers. The uncertainties were overwhelming at times.

The Atlantic puffin is already at the southern end of its breeding range. Photographed at Green Lake National Fish Hatchery. Credit: Fred Yost/USFWS

For instance, Atlantic puffins nest on Maine’s coastal islands and feed on herring and other fish in the Gulf of Maine. But they also spend a considerable amount of time outside the Gulf of Maine – in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Labrador Sea and other areas along the Atlantic coast. It is difficult to predict the effects of climate change on their food base in the Gulf of Maine, much less all the other areas that puffins rely on in a typical year.

We discussed these and many other questions that day. In the end, we identified 168 vulnerable species that could experience large range shifts and population declines as a result of climate change in Maine by 2100. They include Atlantic salmon, Blanding’s turtle, least and roseate terns, Atlantic puffin, red knot, saltmarsh sharp-tailed sparrow, American oystercatcher, piping plover, moose and Canada lynx.

The eastern moose may be vulnerable to outbreaks of moose ticks that survive mild winters well and can cause stressful hair loss and increased calf mortality. Credit: David Govatski/USFWS

We found that many of our existing habitat conservation efforts should succeed despite climate change. We also found that we might need new adaptive strategies—ones that put even more emphasis on connected habitats to allow plants and animals to respond to changing climate.

While only time will confirm our assessments, we hope this report will support decisions and actions that ensure a strong future for Maine’s natural heritage.

See the results of the vulnerability assessment.