Author: CWF

by Todd Pover, Senior Wildlife Biologist

Any day now the first piping plover will be returning to New Jersey to nest. It will likely return to the same beach it nested on in previous years, possibly even the same part of the beach. It will be coming from the same wintering location it used in the past. And it probably even used the same stopover sites during migration. This attachment to place or “site fidelity” is one of the marvels of the birding world, not unique to plovers.

In some ways, it’s not so different for us. We order pizza from the same restaurant, time after time. Many of us vacation in the same place, year after year. And yes, we have been known to repeatedly visit our favorite beach. My parents took my sister and I to the beach at Seaside Heights for summer vacation every year when we were growing up. We went on the beach at the same street access, laid our blanket out at pretty much the same spot, ate at the same place on the boardwalk, EVERY time. It wasn’t until I became an adult that I realized I could travel or vacation elsewhere, and so I began visiting places far away, first Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean, then the desert Southwest, and onto a lifetime of travel to “far flung” places.

And this is where the analogy with piping plovers ends. Plovers don’t travel on a whim. They can’t decide to fly to the west coast this year instead of their usual Atlantic Coast breeding locales. They are hard-wired for efficiency, their behavior is driven by survival and maximizing reproductive success. They return to the same beach because they know there is suitable nesting habitat and good foraging opportunities there, and “knowing that ahead of time” gives them a breeding advantage over other, younger plovers looking for and trying to establish new territories.

Piping plovers do have some capacity for change. They can shift locations if needed, especially if there is a significant alteration to their existing habitat, severe beach erosion, for example, or if they lose a mate in a given year and need to find a new one. There are, however, limits to this. They are “specialists” that require specific habitats and conditions. Furthermore, recent research on the wintering grounds suggest they will remain at the same location even if it is highly disturbed, and even if it negatively impacts their fitness. So, site fidelity usually trumps other factors.

Of course, all of this has conservation implications. Here in New Jersey, development at or near the beach has already limited both the amount and quality of beach habitat available for them to breed. Even if they wanted to “travel elsewhere” they don’t really have an option of other suitable places to go. And, the beaches remaining for them to use, with rare exceptions, are busy with people, which is not a good recipe for a species highly vulnerable to human disturbance. Still, given what we know about site fidelity, our best option is to “pull out all the stops”, put the strongest protection measures in place, at the sites that are left for them to nest.

This is what keeps me up at night, even after more than 25 years on the job. New Jersey is a tough place for piping plovers to succeed. It is not necessarily a losing battle, but it hasn’t always been a winning one either. As I gear up for another breeding season, I know that I and the dedicated community of other plover monitors will do everything we can to protect them and try to secure their future. But…we need your help too. Stay out of the fence or barriers erected to protect their nests, leave your dog at home, off of nesting beaches, and keep your distance when flightless chicks move outside the fence to feed at the waterline. Please enjoy them, but carefully and at a distance.

This reminds me of the lessons we’ve learned with the Covid pandemic this past year. We can’t beat it alone; we need to work together. We have to take actions that help each other, not just ourselves. This is the model for piping plover conservation too. We will keep protecting them, but ultimately, we need everyone’s help if piping plovers are going to succeed and eventually recover.

Join me on Team Plover!

by Chris Johnson, with forward by Todd Pover

Starting in 2011, Conserve Wildlife Foundation of NJ, led by Senior Wildlife Biologist Todd Pover, has been working in the Bahamas, primarily Abaco, to help study the habitat and distribution of wintering piping plovers.

Band resighting surveys are one of the important aspects of this work. As a result of severe damage from Hurricane Dorian in 2019 and current safety issues due to the Covid pandemic, regular surveys were not conducted this winter, either by CWF or the group of local volunteers who have assisted over the years.

With this in mind, we were delighted to get a very late winter report from Chris Johnson, a local resident and accomplished young birder. You can read his account of the survey and enjoy his photos below.

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On February 26^th, 2021 a large group of Piping Plovers was sighted and documented on a sand flat near Cherokee Sound on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas by local residents Christopher Johnson and Michael Knowles. The flat was teeming with bird life as many migratory shorebirds were preparing to begin their journeys back to the breeding grounds. Short-Billed Dowitchers, Black-Bellied Plovers, Least Sandpipers, and Semipalmated Sandpipers were a great find. However, the pinnacle of the birding trip was a grand total of 46 Piping Plovers!

Among the 46 plovers were three notable, returning plovers, recognizable from their leg bands: Squid (Right Leg-Green over Red, Left Leg-Blue over Black), Joe (Green Flag 70E) and White Flag 36. The behavior of these plovers surely indicated that they are on the brink of beginning their migrations northward. Many were beginning to gain their summer breeding plumage and were feuding over crustaceans and worms, while others were bickering for a mere resting place.

The substantial group of plovers stuck around on the sand flat that was slowly diminishing due to the rising tide and continued to rest and feed on the flat for another 25 minutes. It was apparent as the first flock congregated and took to the wing due east that they were bound for their roost in nearby Casuarina Point. After the majority group of 30, including Joe and White Flag #36 departed, a small group of 16 remained resting on the last segment of the flat. Within another ten minutes the second group of plovers had hightailed it for the Cherokee Creek System. The “Cherokee Group”, including Squid, would vanish into the dense mangrove ecosystem to get a good night’s rest.

A group of this size would suggest that many of these birds will begin their migrations back north within the coming weeks. Hopefully a successful breeding season lies ahead!

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Link to eBird Checklist: https://ebird.org/checklist/S82573290

Check out more photos by Chris on Instagram & Facebook.

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by David Wheeler

Wild New Jersey Revisited is a monthly series of excerpts from Conserve Wildlife Foundation executive director David Wheeler’s 2011 book Wild New Jersey: Nature Adventures in the Garden State.

Today we focus on a winter visitor from the Arctic.

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Excerpt from Chapter 13

Great White Hunter

Pick a sunny but frigid day in the heart of winter. Find a remote, windswept location along the Jersey Shore. Bring a high-powered spotting scope or binoculars, extra layers of winter clothes, and a healthy supply of patience.

Voila! That might be enough to get you a sighting of a seal – or fifty – in the Garden State.

Incredibly enough, seals are becoming more and more common along the coast each winter, eating a daily ration of up to 20 pounds of flounder, other fish, shellfish, crustaceans, and mollusks. Four species visit New Jersey’s coastal waters in a given winter. Spotted most frequently are harbor seals hauling out onto exposed sandbars or dredge spoils along the coast. Gray and hooded seals from as far as the Norwegian island of Svalbard visit less often. Each has a unique look. The gray seal’s large snout earned it the nickname “horsehead seal.” The male hooded seal inflates its nose to attract female seals – and looks like a veritable Bozo the Seal.

The harp seal, on the other hand, is the equivalent of a seal supermodel. You may have seen them many times before. In the 1980s the harp seal’s puppy-eyed white pups served as the adorable public face of the anti-seal hunting movement. Far less common in estuaries than harbor seals, the harp seal usually sticks to the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Nonetheless, young harp seals are found regularly on New Jersey’s coast each winter.

Sandy Hook is a great place for seeing a seal in the wild. Seals often hunt at night and spend their days resting onshore – an ideal schedule for wildlife enthusiasts. That is, for those willing to walk the most windswept waterfront locations in the coldest months of the year. Joe Reynolds, of the Bayshore Regional Watershed Council, is just such an adventurer.

“When it’s low tide on a really sunny day, you have the potential to see thirty to fifty seals out basking together on Skeleton Island,” says Reynolds.

The Rescuers

Reynolds is also one of around a hundred active volunteers with the Marine Mammal Stranding Center. These volunteers up and down the coast serve as the eyes and ears of the unique Brigantine-based center, which was started in 1978 to rescue and rehabilitate injured or stranded seals, whales, dolphins, and sea turtles. Sheila Dean, the center’s co-director, has worked for more than two decades to help such marine animals.

“We had a little seal – we named her Tak, after the harbor where she was born, Takanassee – that was stranded just after being born,” says Dean. “Her mother left the baby on the beach – there was just no way she could keep people away. We raised it, but she was just too imprinted on humans. We ended up giving her to the Indianapolis Zoo. I felt really bad, but she would not have survived out there.”

Dean wasn’t being overprotective. A dolphin in Florida, after being rehabilitated for nine months, was released into the wild. Sharks killed it immediately upon release, with everyone watching in horror. Clearly nature takes its own course.

Many of New Jersey’s stranded seals are victims of shark bites. In 2009 at least five seals were mauled by the same shark, which was caught off the Sea Girt Reef.

“Shark-bit seals are quite common, and we sometimes get a lot of them,” says Maurice Tremblay, a Marine Mammal Stranding Center volunteer. “We even had one with a bite from an orca.”

After my tour of the center, I realize I just have to see a seal in New Jersey for myself. I had seen seals off the coast of Northern Ireland and enjoyed the fussy orchestra of the famed sea lions at San Francisco’s wharfside, but seals never seemed possible in New Jersey.

I pick the right day: it is absolutely glacial, with a winter storm scheduled to hit within a few hours. My daughter and I head first to Skeleton Island, a long barrier strip on the bay side of Sandy Hook. It is low tide, and the tangy smell of saltmarsh fills the air. Many dark, long shapes pepper the distant sandbars beyond the island, and our hopes are high. A closer look through my binoculars reveals no movement. My “seals” turn out to be driftwood logs and rocks.

We watch gulls drop clams against the rocks and plummet after them, and then we head for the northern end of Sandy Hook near Fort Hancock. Looping around, I drive south along the bay’s edge, peering through the passenger window and hoping against hope for a seal. A male red-breasted merganser catches Kayla’s eye, its green head feathers tussled in the back like a case of bedhead. I pull to the right and back up for a closer look. It is then that I see a dark shape that almost immediately goes under. It does not register as a bird, so could it be…?

I turn the car around for a direct look with my binoculars, and there it is! A clear shot of a seal head, dark black with puppy dog eyes, long face, and whiskers. We watch for a few seconds as it stares back before finally going under. Between the seal and the approaching storm, Sandy Hook might as well be the Arctic.

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Ten Years Gone

Seals continue to visit the Jersey Shore each winter, with sightings steadily increasing in recent years. Among the best places to see them each winter are Sandy Hook, Liberty State Park, and Cape May. Sightings typically occur through April, so if you’re interested, best to try as soon as possible!

The Marine Mammal Stranding Center continues to protect and rehabilitate marine mammals and sea turtles along New Jersey’s coastline, with over 300 volunteers. And Joe Reynolds has since founded the nonprofit Save Coastal Wildlife in 2018 to engage people with the biodiversity along the Jersey Shore.

– David Wheeler, March 2021

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Read Part I of Wild New Jersey Revisited: A Predator Returns to the State’s Rugged Northwest

Visit CWF’s species spotlight on seals in New Jersey, and interact with our StoryMap on harbor seals in New Jersey.

Stay tuned for the next installment of “Wild New Jersey Revisited” – a memorable night spent out in the early spring rain with salamanders and frogs!

Don’t forget to purchase your own copy of Wild New Jersey from the CWF Store today!

by Ethan Gilardi, Wildlife Biologist

CWF invites high school students from across the state to submit an original social media campaign showing why it is important to protect wildlife in New Jersey!

The fun and educational Species on the Edge 2.0 Social Media Contest capitalizes on high school students’ expertise with social media platforms and provides them with the opportunity to showcase their talent, creativity, and love of nature.

Students will create their own original content (for example: video, text, photograph, computer graphic) or utilize existing Conserve Wildlife Foundation content to create a series of posts focusing on one of New Jersey’s vulnerable species that CWF helps protect.

Best of all, it’s free – and gives students the chance to win prizes!  

1st place wins $1,000

2nd place wins $500

3rd place wins $250

This is a wonderful opportunity for high school students to learn about and advocate for New Jersey wildlife, while also earning the chance to win a scholarship! Moreover, the students utilize social media for purposes of this contest!

Please note that entry forms must be received by Saturday, March 27, 2021.

A special thank you to contest sponsor PSEG Foundation.

by Ethan Gilardi, Wildlife Biologist

Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey is proud to present a special event screening of Monty & Rose: The Story of Chicago’s Piping Plovers.

Join us on March 18, 2021 at 7pm, for a virtual presentation of the 23-minute documentary hosted by “Monty and Rose” director Bob Dolgan and CWF Senior Biologist Todd Pover. This will mark the film’s first screening on the East Coast!

Written and directed by Bob Dolgan, “Monty and Rose” tells the story of a pair of endangered piping plovers that nested at Chicago’s Montrose Beach in the summer of 2019, becoming the first of the species to nest in the city since 1955. With a music festival scheduled to take place within feet of the plovers’ nest site, volunteers, advocates, and biologists get to work in order to protect the vulnerable pair. The documentary follows these efforts, including interviews with those there to help this special pair nesting on one of the busiest beaches in Chicago.

The screening will include an introduction to “Monty and Rose” provided by the director prior to the film screening. After the film, Bob Dolgan and Todd Pover will host an audience Q&A and conversation about the film, piping plovers, and beach nesting birds!

One lucky participant will also be chosen at random to win a Piping Plover Prize Pack! Prizes include a newly designed CWF PIPL hat and other assorted beach nesting bird goodies to be shipped right to your home.

We hope you’ll join us for an evening celebrating piping plovers and those who work to protect them.

About the Hosts:

Bob Dolgan is a life long birder and filmmaker from Chicago. He’s the founder of Turnstone Strategies, author of the This Week in Birding newsletter, and a past Board Member of Chicago Ornithological Society.

Todd Pover has been involved in research, monitoring, and management of beach nesting birds for over 25 years in New Jersey and other portions of the flyway. He heads up the CWF beach nesting bird project and leads our Bahamas piping plover wintering grounds initiative.

Watch the Official “Monty and Rose” Trailer:

by David Wheeler

Wild New Jersey Revisited is a monthly series of excerpts from Conserve Wildlife Foundation executive director David Wheeler’s 2011 book Wild New Jersey: Nature Adventures in the Garden State. Today we focus on the surprising return of a rare predator to New Jersey, and the late field biologist who foretold it – then documented it.

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Excerpt from Chapter 2:

The Carnivore Corridor of Stokes State Forest

On a frosty winter morning, I join a fellow adventurer for a sunrise hike into Tillman Ravine. This cold is the kind that takes your breath away, the kind that makes it hard to notice anything else – until I descend into the ravine. The rushing mountain stream twists and turns, crashing over jagged boulders and toppled hemlocks. Patches of ice coat the surfaces of riverside boulders, some icicles growing upward from the waterfall mist. Heavy recent snows and rains have the stream flowing higher than normal, overrunning some of the trail. This is one wild place.

It is easy, on this early morning, with no sound but the crashing torrent, to imagine the wildlife that lives here. A mother bear warily leading her cubs down the steep mountain slope for a drink. A mink slinking stealthily along the boulders in search of its next meal. A river otter family tumbling in the currents downstream.

One visionary wildlife researcher is doing a lot more than imagining that. Charlie Kontos is seeing it all. Through his motion-detector cameras and wilderness tracking, through his exhaustive historical research and coordination with wildlife geneticists, he is leading the charge to ensure that the species we nearly lost are still welcome here in the wilds of northwestern New Jersey. For Kontos, that safe haven cannot be some isolated pocket of land. We must restore the active wildlife corridor that connects to the Catskills and the Appalachians and the Adirondacks, all the way up into New England and the great boreal forest of Canada.

Continue reading “Wild New Jersey Revisited: A Predator Returns to the State’s Rugged Northwest”

Book excerpts each month to be accompanied by timely wildlife updates

by David Wheeler

Growing up in suburban and coastal New Jersey, I was fascinated by wildlife from my earliest days. Whether catching frogs in the neighborhood, or collecting safari cards and watching Nature specials on Komodo dragons, wildlife both local and global captured my imagination like nothing else. My studies and early career focused on other areas, such as writing and communications, but the great outdoors was never far from my thoughts.

When the time was right, I decided to write what would become my book, “Wild New Jersey: Nature Adventures in the Garden State.” I spent time with many of the top scientists and naturalists in the state, as I devoted all my free time for a year to undertaking a whirlwind journey around New Jersey, experiencing its wildlife, nature destinations, and outdoor activities first-hand.

It has now been 10 years since “Wild New Jersey” was published. In those ensuing years, I became the Executive Director of Conserve Wildlife Foundation, the dynamic organization that had featured so prominently in my book. Many themes I covered then resound even more today. The across-the-board impacts of climate change on New Jersey’s wildlife. Escalating land development, particularly in suburban areas. An even greater emphasis on protecting wildlife corridors and contiguous habitat. An increasing awareness of many species thriving in urban areas against daunting odds.

For better or worse, the populations of most of New Jersey species I highlighted 10 years ago have continued on the same trends of recovery or decline. That’s good news for bald eagles, peregrine falcons, and ospreys, along with bobcats and coyotes. It’s more worrisome for many bat, amphibian and reptile species, as well as many songbirds, shorebirds, and pollinators.

Sadly, a few of the wildlife pioneers and conservation heroes with whom I was privileged to spend time or enjoy conversations while writing my book have since passed away, including field biologist Charles Kontos, Len Soucy, founder of the Raptor Trust, and Dery Bennett, founder of American Littoral Society. Their legacies carry forward today as strong as ever.

With our past year marked by serious restrictions on both our interaction with others and the activities we can enjoy, many New Jerseyans may have a building list of adventures that we are considering once safety permits. Thankfully, these options haven’t changed much at all over the 10 years since I wrote “Wild New Jersey.” With the right timing and guides, we still can go out and enjoy dog sledding, birding on the open ocean, mountain hikes in bear country, and nighttime treks through a cranberry bog – or, on the more serene side, pontoon boat wildlife tours, river floats, seining, and bird walks led by top experts.

Those kinds of adventures are still out there for the taking in every corner of the state. Some of it can be done right now, while other trips may have to wait until we get further along in our fight against COVID-19.

In the meantime, I am excited to celebrate 10 years of Wild New Jersey with you. For the next year, Conserve Wildlife Foundation will run a seasonal excerpt each month, along with updated commentary giving context to a featured species, habitat, or locale.

Join me on Friday in kicking off our series with a book excerpt and update on the unlikely return of a predator to New Jersey’s wilds.

David Wheeler is the Executive Director of Conserve Wildlife Foundation and the author of Wild New Jersey: Nature Adventures in the Garden State.

Guest post by Kathy Clark, State Endangered and Nongame Species Program

We in the Bald Eagle Project lost a dear friend in November, 2020, when Mary Jane Horner passed away unexpectedly. Mary Jane, along with her husband Red, of Pittsgrove, New Jersey, were among the very first eagle volunteers, getting involved in the project in 1993 when there were just six nests in the entire state of New Jersey. Like so many of us at the time, she learned about bald eagles by spending a lot of time watching them, and became a field expert! 

The 1990s were early, formative years for the eagle program, and Mary Jane and Red were part of building the foundation of a program that thrives today. Mary Jane was a strong “force of nature” for bald eagles! She was direct and persistent, while always being kind and polite. She called out wrongs and worked consistently for the highest level of protection for her eagles and nests.

Her quiet tenacity worked! Mary Jane, with Red always at her side, helped engage local landowners and neighbors, and over the years a handful of nests multiplied.

During their busiest seasons, Mary Jane and Red monitored at least ten nests, and she could tell you every detail of each nest and their milestones! Mary Jane’s dedication to bald eagles in south Jersey was in every way an act of love – for bald eagles and for the natural world.

I will miss Mary Jane very much. Her quiet and kind demeanor, her steadfast devotion, and her friendship with me and many of us in the program will remain in my memory.

We encourage those who wish to share memories of Mary Jane to do so in the comments below and on her obituary page.

Kathy Clark is the Supervising Zoologist for the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife’s Endangered and Nongame Species Program, which runs the New Jersey Bald Eagle Project in partnership with Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey.

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by Todd Pover, Senior Wildlife Biologist

Even though all the major construction at our Barnegat Light Habitat Restoration site was complete over the past two winters, CWF returned in January 2021 to help oversee a “touch up”.  Beach nesting birds, such as piping plovers, prefer open, lightly vegetated beaches to nest, and in two years the vegetation had filled in quickly at the site. Using a bulldozer, the thicker vegetation was trimmed back or as the machine operator said, we gave it a “haircut”.

At the same time, the shallow edges of the foraging pond were enhanced. The pond, in particular a portion engineered to mimic “foraging flats”, was a key part of the success of piping plovers during the 2020 breeding season. We were able to expand that feature in hopes of providing even more high value foraging opportunities in years to come.

Initial construction was obviously the most important step to make this long-anticipated project a reality, but ongoing maintenance is an important part of any restoration, as habitat, especially in the dynamic coastal zone, rarely remains static. Still, follow-up maintenance is often overlooked or underfunded, but we know it will be absolutely critical as a long-term measure at Barnegat Light to sustain quality nesting habitat and high reproductive success.

The work this winter was done in tandem with Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, our primary technical partner on the project. A special thanks to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – Philadelphia District for funding and facilitating the maintenance construction. We also greatly appreciate the ongoing partnership on this project of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – New Jersey Field Office and State of New Jersey’s Endangered and Nongame Species Program.

Todd Pover is a biologist with Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey.

by Mary Emich, Assistant Biologist

Groundhog Day is the annual tradition in which a groundhog is used as a predictor for the length of the winter. Each year on February 2^nd, the groundhog crawls out of his burrow in search for his shadow. If the shadow is not seen, then it is believed that there will be an early spring. On the other hand, if the groundhog finds his shadow, he will hide away and there will be six more long weeks of winter.

The groundhog or woodchuck as it is also known, Marmota monax, is one of the largest members of the squirrel family and can be found across North America. Here in New Jersey, the groundhog may be our most frequently sighted mammal after the squirrel. Driving on many New Jersey roads can bring regular glimpses of groundhogs standing up and scanning for danger on the grassy shoulders of roads.

One common location where groundhogs can be found is under a shed in your own backyard. While their entrance hole is what you notice, what you cannot not see is the intricate underground burrows they build. The burrow is dug with different tunnels that can be up to 30 feet long, and are used as dens for raising kits, hibernating, and even as bathrooms.

You may be wondering how this rodent was chosen for the specific job forecasting weather. Initially this holiday began in Germany using badgers. They employed the badgers to predict when spring would arrive, enabling them to determine when to plant their crops. When German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania the yearly tradition continued. Groundhogs were replaced for badgers, and the first Groundhog Day was held in Punxsutawney in the 1800s. Groundhogs are true hibernators, meaning their body temperature and heart rate decrease during hibernation. Groundhog Day is celebrated in early February when male groundhogs wake up early from hibernation to begin the mating season. In 1887, Punxsutawney Phil became the most famous groundhog in America and remains so to this day. Other cities have adopted their own official groundhogs like Staten Island Chuck in New York’s Staten Island Zoo and Jimmy in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.

According to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Phil has projected an early spring correct only 40% of the time. While this success rate may not be particularly impressive, people from all over wake up bright early eager to tune into the celebration and see the groundhog’s predication. The event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania has become the most attended groundhog celebration.

For this 135^th straight year of groundhog stardom, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club organized a livestream that begins at 6:30am, so people can enjoy the celebration from home during the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, this year we can relate to the hibernating groundhogs more than ever. So many of us hope that Phil will not see his shadow, spring will be just around the corner, and we can all come out of our hibernation to enjoy the warm weather.

You can watch the Groundhog Day festivities live at 6am by clicking here.