Author: CWF

CWF’s Larry Niles is in Northern Canada searching for Red Knots and other shorebirds in their Arctic breeding territory. We are following him and posting summaries of his blog entries as he reports from the field.

 

After 10 days in the field, 5 of them searching for knots, and with only one day before we must leave, we have at long last found knot nests – two, in fact. As we suspected, both still contained eggs, although one adult was also brooding a chick that was only hours old. Also as we suspected, we found them on small ridges in gravel-sized frost-cracked rock with very sparse vegetation.

 

There are fewer knots than the number of potential knot nesting sites in our study area, meaning the knots have two possible strategies when they choose a nesting site: they could be fanning out at very low densities, or they could be clustering and keeping a certain distance apart. Our experience at our first red knot study site suggested the latter possibility. In the first few years, when knot populations were still fairly high, knots occurred along ridges one kilometer apart. This fell apart as the number of knots collapsed in the period between 1999 to 2006, but our experience suggested knots will stay together and keep territories of about one square kilometer. In other words, knots like their space, but they still want neighbors.

 

So after finding the first nest, we started searching about 1 km away in adjacent habitat and soon found a second nest, corroborating our theory. But by then it was close to the end of the day and we had only an hour or so to search for a third. Finding none, we rode the 4 miles of hard trail back to camp with some satisfaction. We will try again tomorrow to find more in the area, but unfortunately it will be our last day.

 

Rain is falling against our tent, as it has through most of the night. Rain in the Arctic is always cold – more of a winter rain than one of summer. The knot nest with one chick will almost certainly have four by now, as it usually only takes 24 hours for all eggs to hatch. The adult will brood the chicks as best he can, but it’s not unusual for weather such as this to kill young shorebirds. This is one of many reasons why northbound stopovers like Delaware Bay must provide shorebirds with a good start every year.

 

If the rain abates, we will continue searching for nests tomorrow, but only time will tell whether our final day in the field will be a washout. Regardless, it is a wonderful feeling to have finally found what we came searching for.

 

For the full blog entry, see Larry’s post here.

Stay tuned for further updates!

 

 

CWF’s Larry Niles is in Northern Canada searching for Red Knots and other shorebirds in their Arctic breeding territory. We are following him and posting summaries of his blog entries as he reports from the field.

 

Our camp here on knot plateau is spartan. We had to jettison many of the luxury items, like the cook tent, so that we would need to make the 25-mile ATV trip into the plateau only once. Even then, the ATVs were overloaded, and we had numerous problems like flat tires and a cracked support for the back rack.

 

At this point in our trip, the rigors of conducting daily field work and sleeping on therm-a-rest mattresses in unheated, low-ceilinged tents are starting to wear us out. Of course, much of this is age-related. The author of this blog, being on the older side of the crew, finds the need to get dressed in a tent the size of a refrigerator box to be the most difficult part of our field experience. Ironically Joshua, the youngest of our crew, has a small campaign tent in which he can stand.

 

But complications such as these are minor compared to what we have discovered: numbers of knots at least equal to the high densities we saw years ago. Better yet, the amount of potential nesting habitat on knot plateau is far greater than other Arctic sites we have surveyed because the knots here are nesting in much greater profusion. This plateau is perfect nesting habitat because these potential nesting sites are surrounded by wetlands where the newly-hatched young can feed, and the complex is also within 10 kilometers of the Sutton River basin. The river remains clear almost year-round, making it a perfect feeding spot for the adults while the nesting area is still frozen.

 

The greater area of habitat, however, causes great difficulty in finding nests, and it doesn’t help that knot nests are the notoriously hard to locate to begin with. Most shorebirds react to intruders on approach because both adults stay near the nest. But Red Knots, on the other hand, don’t react to intruders because one adult is elsewhere feeding and the incubating bird won’t leave the nest until he is almost stepped on. So far, we have found the nests of several shorebird species such as American Golden Plover, Semipalmated Sandpiper, and Dunlin, as well as those of other birds like Long-tailed Jaegers – but so far no knot nests.

 

Our mapping work is going well and may yet prove the most valuable result of this trip. Under Rick’s guidance we are ground truthing interpreted satellite images that already distinguish tundra habitat with good precision. Our task is to train the map to distinguish habitat important to knots. In the end we will create a precise mapping of optimal knot habitat.

 

All in all, we still have a lot of work to do and not much time left to do it. But even though we have yet to find the knot nests we came for, we cannot help but be pleased by what we have already found.

 

For the original blog entries, see Larry’s posts Knot Plateau and The Search Continues.

Stay tuned for further updates!

 

 

It’s another cloudy day and I scan the beach with my binoculars. No dogs. Only a handful of fishermen dot the water line. I return my focus to the small area towards the dune line, where a high concentration of shells lies. Look for two intact clamshells just in line with where the beach entrance should be. Without the binoculars, I find the location. It is not until I use my binoculars, however, do I spot the Piping Plover incubating a four-egg nest in that exact spot. Camouflage works wonders, I remind myself.

Since late April, I have been working as a seasonal beach nesting bird field technician. Our four main species of focus are Piping Plover, American Oystercatcher, Least Tern, and Black Skimmer. While the latter two species form colonies where they lay their eggs, the former two species defend territories as pairs. All four can be found on the same beach, however, which leads to lots of interesting interspecific and intraspecific interactions. Oystercatchers chasing plovers, terns dive bombing oystercatchers, etc., etc.… My job is not focused on those behaviors, however. My tasks include bimonthly surveys of the tern/skimmer colonies and recording the nesting success of plovers and oystercatchers. How many eggs are laid, how many eggs are predated, how many eggs hatch, how many chicks are predated, and, everyone’s favorite scenario, how many chicks fledge (i.e. reach the stage where they can fly)? Some of the birds are also banded, which allows for individual identification and adds another layer to nesting success when the birds return year after year.

A big part of my job is also dealing with the public, and as with any field site, there are those that appreciate what I do and those that are against it. While I prefer the former, I am well aware of the arguments from both sides having grown up in Ocean City myself. I am particularly interested in human-wildlife interactions, so I really appreciate the opportunity to work with the local community. I began working in the field of ecology and conservation biology in college, but most of my previous work has been international. I looked at crocodilian diets in Peru, studied the behavior of mountain gorillas in Uganda, researched the effects of landscape management on carnivore and wildlife populations in Kenya’s savannas, but this has been my first experience working with birds and working in what is basically my backyard.

With chicks now hatching up and down the New Jersey coastline, I feel busier than ever trying to ensure these little guys have a chance to beat the odds and make it to fledging. Some days that means a lot of physical work- expanding fenced off areas to give them a little more of a buffer between the public- or sometimes it means a lot of social interaction- enforcing the law of no dogs on the beach or keeping children from chasing after the chicks at the water’s edge, where the birds feed. I know that when I leave New Jersey to begin graduate school this August, it will be hard to say goodbye to an amazing summer back home. This is an incredible opportunity to apply my skill set and wildlife conservation goals back here at home and watch these often overlooked birds through this nesting season and hope for continued success in the years to come.

CWF’s Larry Niles is in Northern Canada searching for Red Knots and other shorebirds in their Arctic breeding territory. We are following him as he reports from the field. The following is a summary of his latest blog posts.

 

It has been a grueling, but exhilarating, last few days for our team. At long last, we’ve reached our study site. Anyone else would have looked at this barren plateau and wondered what all the fuss was about, but our team fist-bumped with pride. After three tries, we had finally made it – but getting here was an arduous process we won’t soon forget.

 

We left Coral Harbour on Wednesday afternoon with three ATVs and a truck, as well as a new team member. Josh is our “bear-watcher,” an experienced Inuit hunter whose job is to discourage or, if absolutely necessary, kill an attacking polar bear. We can only hope his services will not be required.

 

We had hoped that the road out of town, which was recently extended, might take us all the way to our study site – but it was not to be. Four hours after leaving Coral Harbour, we reached a point where we had to depart from the road and traverse out into the roadless tundra.

 

We set out by ATV the next morning, but soon ran into trouble. To get to the knot plateau, we had to cross the Sutton River, one of Southampton Island’s major rivers. It’s a gentle stream where it crosses the road, but at the place where we needed to cross it was a wide valley, within which lay one of the most formidable wetlands in the Arctic. The ground shook like Jell-O as we walked, and if an ATV so much as scratched the surface it was down to its axles. After five hours, we had to give up.

 

At Josh’s suggestion, the next day we travelled about 15 miles downriver to a crossing used by Inuit hunters. The river was wider there, but we were optimistic because the riverbank was high ground, so we could drive up or downriver over easily-traversed terrain. But after four attempts with the ATV, we could see the river was too deep to cross. The knot plateau was within sight on the other side, but for a second time we had to drive away.

 

Finally, Rick found an almost entirely dry ridge of high ground about three miles to the west of our camp. After crossing the Sutton River near its headwaters, it was five hours of rough riding with fully-loaded ATVs along the ridge to get back to the knot plateau. When the plateau finally rose up before us, we were elated. We drove six more miles before finally setting camp along one of the many lakes in the complex.

 

The big question we will answer tomorrow is: do knots still use this area? In 1999, there were at least four times as many knots as there were three years ago, following the collapse of the Delaware Bay horseshoe crab population. Knots have disappeared entirely from many areas of the Arctic – are they still here? We shall find out tomorrow.

 

For the original blog entries, see Larry’s posts: Polar Bears and Roadless Tundra, On to the Land, River Crossings, and Third Time’s a Charm.

Stay tuned for further updates!

 

CWF’s Larry Niles is in Northern Canada searching for Red Knots and other shorebirds in their Arctic breeding territory. We are following him and posting summaries of his blog entries as he reports from the field.

 

While flying from Winnipeg to Nunavut, we focused on a strategy for finding red knot nests and adults with broods. We know from our 9 years of Arctic work that knots don’t occur randomly across the tundra landscape. Quite the opposite, they choose very specific places that distinguish knots from other Arctic nesting shorebirds.

 

Most knots choose to nest in relatively barren tundra slightly higher in elevation than more common Arctic nesting shorebirds. The latter prefer the lush wetland tundra along the coast and in the bigger river drainages because of the abundant prey early in the season. So why are knots drawn to colder and more barren places? We suspect they rely on the more persistent snow cover to discourage predation while they lie low in small patches of snow-free patches. Most predators prefer the lush areas with relatively dense shorebird nests. By the time the knot young hatch and are ready to feed, the protective snow barrier melts and the adults take their brood to the surrounding defrosted wetlands. By then shorebird prey are abundant.

 

So we suspect that at this point in the nesting season, we will find eggs just starting to hatch and soon the adults will lead their young to the nearby wetlands. Rick Lathrop, head of the Rutgers University Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis (CRSSA), has prepared mapping that will help us find prospective nest sites with the following characteristics:

1. Areas with less than 5% vegetation (We will especially be looking for eskers, or sinuous frost-cracked rocky ridges that snake through the best knots habitats.)
2. Numerous nearby patches of wetlands or small lakes with interconnecting streams
3. Areas of slightly higher elevation that stay snowy longer into the season

 

We have several targets but we are not certain that we can get to them. We hope to drive into the interior areas of Southampton on a new road built to help residents access new fishing sites. We want to take a truck as far as possible to carry our supplies and equipment. At the road end we will still have to move everything with ATVs to the areas of greatest probability, which are likely to be about 10-20 miles off the new road. It’s hard to plan.

 

But the rewards are great. If we are successful we will be able to study red knot for the first time without the need of being flown in to a remote place at great expense. We shall see.

 

For the original blog entry, see Larry’s post here.

Stay tuned for further updates!

CWF’s Larry Niles and his colleagues left yesterday on a three-week trip to Northern Canada to search for the nests of Red Knots and other shorebirds in their Arctic breeding territory. We’ll be following him and posting summaries of his blog entries as he reports from the field.

 

The odd thing about the shorebirds of Delaware Bay is that they are not really of Delaware Bay but of the Canadian Arctic. The most important part of their lives is spent in the barren high tundra of the Arctic, in places like Southampton Island, located on the north end of Hudson Bay. We have worked in Southampton Island for 6 years studying the red knot but stopped because the decline seen in Delaware Bay was more than apparent in the Arctic – birds literally disappeared from our study site.

 

It’s been 8 years since then, and now we are returning to begin new research on red knots. The first job of our small team (Larry Niles of the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey, Mark Peck of the Royal Ontario Museum, Rick Lathrop of Rutgers University, Amanda Dey on vacation from NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife, and Steve Gates) will be to catch adult birds and attach geolocators, including a new type with a small radio transmitter to help relocate the bird next year. These small devices allow us to track birds around the globe. Our second job is to finish work started years ago on developing an Arctic-wide habitat map for red knots. These two projects are interrelated. Relocated knots help us determine the important places that define red knots habitat. We started this work in our first year.

In 2000, Mark Peck and I hatched a plan to search for knots with transmitters that we attached while the birds stopped over on Delaware Bay. We were foolish enough to think that we could follow the birds to the Arctic and relocate them from an airplane. We didn’t really grasp the odds of success. The transmitters had a range of 8 miles, and we would have to search an area the size of the eastern US. Our anxiety grew when we found that with the cost of renting a plane in the Arctic, we could afford only a few days of searching. As it turned out, we only needed one. Lucky for us, we flew Southampton Island and to our surprise found 8 birds with transmitters. We spent the rest of our time on the ground searching and eventually found the first nest of rufa knots.

 

Over the years our experience has grown but the knot population has shrunk, making them more difficult to find. Knots are tough to find anyway. They occur in very low densities (usually less than one per square kilometer) and the non-incubating adult doesn’t defend the territory, which is the usual clue that a shorebird is nesting nearby. Knots rarely nest where other shorebirds nest, choosing instead to lay eggs in barren tundra far from the coast. We hope to improve our chances this year by going later than normal and searching for adults with broods instead of nests.

 

For the full blog entry, see Larry’s post here.

Stay tuned for further updates!

 

Last week, we released 16 eastern tiger salamander larvae from our headstart program with NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife and the Cape May County Zoo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These larvae were released into newly constructed pools as part of our vernal-pool habitat restoration project to create new vernal pools above anticipated sea-level rise to mitigate for climate change.  This project is part of a larger goal to create a stronghold for eastern tiger salamanders in New Jersey.

See the slideshow from the release

 

Hi. I’m Gabby Flora – graduate of Rutgers University and the newest intern at the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey. My journey to get here begins in Brick, New Jersey. I didn’t leave the nest until my first semester of college, when I doubled majored in Fine Arts and Communications at Marymount Manhattan College in Manhattan. I spent every day exploring the world’s greatest, most stimulating, and truly sleepless city.

However, I left quite abruptly that summer for Little Cayman Island, participating in coral reef research and restoration at the Caribbean Coral Marine Institute. I swam with tiger sharks and schools of barracuda. I climbed through mangrove forests. I got stung by fire coral, bitten by grouper, and nearly poisoned by lionfish. I became conscious of the environment and nature. I’d have stayed there forever if my mother hadn’t threatened to drag me home herself.

I then briefly attended Ocean County College in Toms River, New Jersey. I studied environmental science and ecology before flying away to Europe. I lived in Italy for one year, where I painted, sculpted, and wrote travel articles. I explored Germany, France, Prague, Austria, Croatia, Switzerland, and nearly all of Italy. I now know my wines, my cheeses, and the difference between gelato and ice cream. By the time I came home, I had gained independence (and roughly twenty-five pounds). I had a new appreciation for ice cubes, my parents, and American television and I discovered that I’m undeniably proud to be an American.

I next attended college at Rutgers University studying environmental journalism. I commuted, waited tables, and took a number of internships. First, I interned with the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group as a member of the Energy Service Corps for one year, then with the AmeriCorps as the Energy Education k-12 Program Coordinator in New Jersey for two years and finally with the New Jersey Environmental Federation as a canvasser and field manager for six months. I graduated from Rutgers this January with a degree in Journalism and Media Studies from the School of Environmental and Biological Science and a minor in Environmental Policy, Institutions, and Behaviors.

Directly after graduation I left for Costa Rica. I was part of a program there called GREEN – the Global Renewable Energy Education Network. For three weeks, I traveled around the only country in the world that is 98% powered by renewable energy, seeing the many benefits of the world’s most valuable and underused resources. I hiked and zip-lined through rainforests, built rain-water collection units for poor communities, and developed a capstone project focused on energy efficiency in suburban communities.

Since returning from Costa Rica, I’ve focused largely on working at my current full-time job as a waitress at 10^th Avenue Burrito Company in Belmar, NJ. My most recent achievement was becoming an intern here at CWF. This exciting opportunity combines all that I have done in my life so far. My writing and artistic skills are being put to good use, my opinions are valued, and my passion for the environment is fueled and inspired by the exceptional people I have the pleasure of working with. I sincerely look forward to continued work with CWF, and cannot wait to see what undertakings the summer holds.

Just a couple of days ago, American kestrels at Duke Farms in Hillsborough, NJ received some jewelry that will help biologists learn more about their migration and annual whereabouts in an attempt to fill in important data gaps about their habits.

Female kestrels received a leg band and more importantly, a geolocator, that will record the sunrise and sunset each day, which will in turn, allow us to determine where in the world these kestrels are on any given day.

Read more about this experience at the Duke Farms blog, Behind the Stone Walls.

A new window into our plover world

By Todd Pover, Beach Nesting Bird Project Manager

On the beach nesting bird project we are normally busy this time of the year locating nests, putting up fence to protect nesting areas, and placing special predator cages around piping plover nests. This year we have added a new wrinkle – we are also conducting intensive piping plover band re-sighting surveys.

Those surveys are possible as a result of a research project being conducted in New Jersey (and Massachusetts) by the State University of New York – College of Environmental Science and Forestry on piping plover flight behaviors and patterns. About 30 plovers were colored banded here last year with more planned this season as part of the study. This has provided an exciting opportunity for us to answer some questions of our own that are not part of the research project itself, so the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey and the state’s Endangered and Nongame Species Program have teamed up to do near daily band re-sightings this spring and last fall. Continue reading “PIPING PLOVER BAND RESIGHTING IN NEW JERSEY”