Category: Beach Nesting Birds

Earlier this month, the 25th annual American Oystercatcher Working Group meeting was held in New Jersey at the Cape May Point Arts and Science Center. Staff from CWF, The Wetlands Institute, and NJDEP Fish and Wildlife, formed the local organizing committee that helped plan, host, and stage the meeting. Nearly 125 Working Group members attended the meeting either in-person or virtually over the course of two days.

Continue reading “American Oystercatcher Working Group Meeting – 25th Anniversary Edition”

The Barnegat Light habitat restoration site has wrapped up its best breeding season for beach nesting birds since the start of the restoration project in 2019. This is exciting news given it was a challenging year at many other breeding sites along the New Jersey coast this year.

Piping plovers, the prime focus of the restoration, had an especially good season. Seventeen (17) fledglings were produced from six pairs for a fledge rate of 2.83 per pair, well above the federal recovery goal of 1.50 fledglings per pair and even more above the anticipated statewide rate for 2025. The six pairs represent the high number for the restoration site, up from one breeding pair remaining at the inlet just before the project began.

Continue reading “Barnegat Light Habitat Restoration Breeding Update”

Audrey Randazzo – Crew Leader

This is Audrey’s third year with CWF surveying beach nesting birds. After graduating from Delaware Valley University’s conservation and wildlife management program in 2021, she has been doing field research on endangered birds throughout the Eastern U.S. From studying Henslow’s sparrow in North Carolina to working on raptor research in upstate New York, she has a lot of experience with studying birds.

Audrey’s favorite parts of the job are finding nests and watching chicks grow into fledglings. She also really enjoys how her work with CWF allows her to spend more time outside, especially in places that are inaccessible to the public. She is greatly appreciative of the opportunities she has had to work so closely with wildlife and recognizes what a privilege it is. 

A raptor-lover at heart, Audrey’s favorite bird is the Northern harrier, but of the beach nesting birds, piping plovers take the cake. She loves their personalities and their adorable chicks, which she affectionately describes as “puffballs with legs”. Her favorite plover is MJ (Michael Jackson) due to his outgoing personality.

Outside of work, Audrey enjoys hiking, paddleboarding, and kayaking.

Gianna Canale

Gianna has been working for CWF for three years and has spent that time focused on the beach nesting birds project. She graduated from Juniata College with a degree in wildlife conservation, inspired by her childhood spent enjoying nature with her family. In addition to her work with CWF, Gianna also helps the state of New Jersey with chronic wasting disease sampling in deer and with the Waterfowl Ecology and Management Program. 

Her favorite parts about working for CWF are the closeness she has developed with the crew and the jokes and stories that they share. She also enjoys getting to see the birds incubate and raise their chicks.

Of the beach nesting birds, Gianna’s favorite species is the piping plover because she finds them to have unique personalities and attitudes. She is especially fond of the plover Sasquatch, since she was part of the crew that got to name her and because Sasquatch tends to live up to her name (her nests are often tricky to find).

In her free time, Gianna enjoys birding and being active outdoors.

Kaiulani Sund

Now in her second year with CWF, Kaiulani joined the team after graduating from Gettysburg College with a degree in environmental studies and a minor in data science. During her senior year at Gettysburg, she worked closely with common and Arctic terns on Petit Manan Island in Maine. 

For Kaiulani, the most rewarding part of her job is getting to know the people and the birds that she works with. She loves Atlantic puffins and piping plovers, and her favorite plover in the project is Zucchini, who built the first nest she ever found. 

When she’s not working, Kaiulani can be found reading and horseback riding.

Mary Adams

This is Mary’s first season with CWF. She attended Franklin & Marshall College, majoring in biology and minoring in environmental studies and French. While in college, she did a thesis on avian habitat selection and during her senior year, she studied wildlife ecology in Dublin, Ireland. She has worked for a wildlife refuge, trained scent-detection dogs, and worked at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania. Even with that amazing lineup of past experience, Mary says that her job with CWF is her favorite experience yet.

She loves finding new nests, seeing each one as a new opportunity for the success of the species. Of the bird species she works with, Mary’s favorite is the American oystercatcher. Her favorite plover is MJ (Michael Jackson), because his was the first plover nest she ever found. Her favorite bird species overall, though, is the red-winged blackbird.

Mary is a proud Philadelphia Phillies fan and she is currently fostering a dog from a shelter. She also likes to read.

Madison Patterson

Madison joined CWF this past spring after graduating from Monmouth University, where she majored in biology. In college, she joined a wildlife ecology research lab in which she studied mammalian predation of box turtles. 

While her background is mainly in herpetology, she has grown to love working with birds, especially black skimmers and a plover named Pikachu, whose nest she found on her first day out surveying. She feels that she has learned so much about shorebirds in her time with the Foundation, from their behavior to their conservation, and she appreciates having the opportunity to do research that she finds so fascinating.

Back at Monmouth, Madison was the vice president of their outdoors club. She frequently goes hiking, camping and backpacking with her friends, and recently, she has been learning how to forage wild edible plants and fungi.

Much of the research that is being done by Conserve Wildlife Foundation on beach nesting birds is confined to the shorelines of New Jersey’s Atlantic coast, but that isn’t the only place in the state where these species can be found.

CWF Wildlife Biologist Emmy Casper and CWF Biological Technician Christine Albrecht spend their days working with an understudied population of American oystercatchers on the Delaware Bay. These birds nest on Moores Beach, which was once a Bay-front neighborhood, but now, after the houses were destroyed by floods and bought out by the state, all that remains are a few scattered bricks. The area has been restored to its natural state and is now teeming with plant and animal life. 

If one is willing to hike the mile-long marshy trail to get there, the public is also free to enjoy the space most of the year (the beach is closed through May for shorebird season). That means that Casper and Albrecht have a bit of extra work to do.

When the biologists find a new nest, they record its location and the parents responsible for it, as is standard across the whole project. But, when they’re done with that, they must also fence in the nest with string and signs warning visitors to keep away, so as to not disturb it.

The pair walk down the beach, checking in on known nests, documenting the behavior of the adults, and searching for new eggs along the way. They’re not always an easy find, but it helps that they’re so desperate to find them. So far this year, none of the oystercatcher parents monitored along the Bayshore had any eggs hatch, even with about twenty pairs calling the region home. Unfortunately, it’s not hard to see why. Raccoon and fox tracks dot the sand at every turn, many leading right to the scrapes where nests had once been. 

Moores Beach accounts for almost a third of all of the Delaware Bay oystercatcher pairs in NJ, and CWF has been monitoring this spot for three years now. Each nesting season has had varying levels of success. In 2023, this beach produced nine chicks, two of which reached fledging. In 2024, one chick fledged. With only a few years of data to look back on, biologists are still left to wonder why the adults continue to come back to this beach to lay their eggs. 

Part of figuring out the “why” is analyzing nests. They measure the distance from the scrape’s centerpoint to the edge of the marsh, to the nearby high tide lines indicated by dry and wet wrack (washed up marine plants and debris), and any nearby foraging sources in the intertidal zone. All of this gives some insight into what conditions oystercatchers prefer and how they minimize distance to their food while also avoiding potential flooding.

Then, the biologists take a look at what the nest is made of. While the oystercatchers don’t have to build intricate structures to hide their well-camouflaged eggs, they still have a choice about where they want to set it up. Using a quadrat to mark a square meter around the nest, the biologists note the percentage of different materials in the area. Some nests have more plant matter, some have more pebbles, others are mostly just sand. Whatever they’re made of, this data can be used to understand what type of nesting habitat oystercatchers prefer on the Bayshore, which may be used to inform future management or restoration decisions.

Additionally, Casper and Albrecht observe the adult oystercatchers, hoping to catch them foraging for food. If they do, that helps the team to learn more about where and what food sources the birds go after on this beach compared to shores on the Atlantic coast. It can also show the effectiveness of living shoreline  restoration projects.

While it may be tough work at times, there is also a lot of excitement. As the nesting season comes to a close, the opportunities for finding new eggs slims. But, one pair wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

Moby and Evermoore are an older oystercatcher pair, with Evermoore being banded in 2018. As the biologists were walking through the pair’s territory, they spotted a single, speckled egg. This was the couple’s fourth attempt so far this season, which is uncommonly high for oystercatchers. But there it was, a beautiful little beacon of hope. Casper and Albrecht took their measurements and set up the fence and a trail camera, and continued on their way, now with big smiles on their faces.

Horseshoe crabs are ancient creatures, having first evolved hundreds of millions of years ago. Since then, they haven’t changed much, but the world around them certainly has. Human activity has taken a toll on horseshoe crabs- for years, people have been harvesting them for use as bait and in medical applications. New Jersey now has a moratorium preventing this from continuing, but their population is still lower than it should be. Luckily, something as simple as flipping a horseshoe crab off of its back can help to restore their numbers. I recently had the privilege of joining Larissa Smith, Senior Wildlife Biologist at CWF, on a trip to the Delaware Bay. In partnership with ReTurn the Favor, she regularly visits beaches that are rife with stranded horseshoe crabs and helps them get back to the water. At the nightly high tide, hundreds of crabs come up to shore to spawn, but when the tide goes out, many of them get stuck on their backs or buried in vegetation, unable to return to their habitats. Rescuing them can be as easy as turning them back onto their legs, but others need a bit more help.

On this day, we started with just a few unfortunate crabs that needed assistance getting off of their backs. We picked them up, flipped them, and off they went. But then, as we turned from the beach to a marshy creek, we were met with hundreds of crabs trapped in the grass. At first, it seemed like we were too late to save them, but as we went along, we found that almost every single one was still alive. So, we wrestled them out of the greenery and carried them back down to the water.

It was a lot of work, but we soon managed to rescue over 100 horseshoe crabs from that section alone. Most of them were females, as evidenced by their large size and pincers. Each one that survived represented a potential new generation of crabs. Female horseshoe crabs can lay around 80 thousand to 100 thousand eggs per year, most of which become food sources for other animals like laughing gulls, which were flocked heavily on the beaches that day. While it’s a bit unfortunate for the crabs, the loss of some of their eggs helps to keep the ecosystem running smoothly.

In just a few hours, we helped 198 horseshoe crabs return to the bay, and we had a lot of fun doing it. The effort to restore the populations of New Jersey’s horseshoe crabs is full of obstacles, but there is also so much hope. Just about anyone can flip an overturned horseshoe crab, and the feeling that comes along with doing so is wonderful. While the horseshoe crabs may not be able to thank us, we can always tell that they greatly appreciate our support.

Returnthefavornj.org

Only a short boat ride off the coast of Little Egg Harbor Township lies an undisturbed haven for endangered beach-nesting birds. The shorelines of Horseshoe Island and Holgate are fully-stocked with piping plovers, black skimmers, and many signs warning boaters not to land on the protected islands. Members of the public are not allowed into these highly-restricted areas, and the only people allowed to step foot there are a small group of biologists.

Todd Pover, Senior Wildlife Biologist at CWF, and his team travel to these islands throughout the nesting season to keep an eye on nests and collect data on them. They work in partnership with New Jersey Fish and Wildlife and Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge to get access to the refuge and record information. 

A day in the field starts with a visit to Horseshoe Island, a new and unique addition to the New Jersey off-shore landscape. What started as a small sandbar less than a decade ago has become a half-mile island that has been growing every year. While the new space is great for birds looking to start a family, the best part of the deal is that the island is free of mammalian predators like foxes, which are common nest destroyers. 

The walk around the island takes the team a few hours to complete, even after dividing up the work. They venture from point to point, stopping where nests and mating pairs had previously been observed. Most of the focus for this trip is on American oystercatchers, a special concern beach-nesting species, and piping plovers, which are endangered. At each stop, the researchers look for eggs and chicks at the nesting sites so they can be logged and development can be tracked. Sometimes the nests are destroyed or the chicks don’t survive, and that is also recorded. All of this data is stored in a database so that the success of each generation can be measured over time.

Occasionally, the team will find a new nest, but the process is tricky. Sometimes, they’ll get lucky and the parents will be nearby, leading them right to the site, but other times, they have to follow tiny, sandy tracks to find the divots in the sand that beach-nesting birds scrape out for nests. 

“It’s like being a detective,” said Madison Patterson, one of the biologists.

One of the joys of the work for the crew is finding that a previously unsuccessful pair of birds had renested. Many of the individuals on the island are banded, especially the American oystercatchers, so it makes it easier to identify which bird is which. For the plovers, not only do they get bands, but names, too. On Horseshoe, a male named Secretariat seems to enjoy scurrying around the island, using his camouflage to hide from the researchers. But, the professionals that they are, they find him anyway and add him to their logs.

By noon, it’s time to get back on the boat and head to the next stop: Holgate, a Unit of the Edwin B. Forsythe NWR. Unlike Horseshoe Island, this location does have mammalian predators, as well as a large population of endangered least terns. It also has the largest number of piping plover pairs in New Jersey. 

All across the island, tern, skimmer, and plover eggs abound. Each step must be taken with the utmost care, as one wrong move can destroy a nest and take a toll on the next generation’s population size. That’s pretty serious: these species have been classified as endangered in the state for decades and the constant threat of habitat loss due to human activity makes it even harder for these birds to bounce back.

In the mid afternoon, the team finishes up their final bits of data collection and gathers back on the boat. As they return to the mainland, the sounds of squawking soften and the islands vanish into the distance. But they would not be gone long, for tomorrow would bring a new day, new trails, and new lives for the team to document.

For more information on CWF’s beach nesting birds project, visit our project page.

In late 2024 we closed out our third year of comprehensive monitoring and management of nesting and migratory birds at Horseshoe Island. The recently formed island, situated just outside the southern edge of Little Egg Inlet, has quickly become one of the most important beach nesting bird sites in New Jersey. 

Each year has presented new challenges and changes on the island and in 2024 there were a number of “firsts” to report. Piping  plovers had previously utilized the island to rest and forage during both the migration and breeding seasons, this was the first year that they nested there. Adding any new nesting site for piping plovers in New Jersey is big news, adding three pairs was even more exciting. Although all three pairs hatched young, no chicks successfully fledged from the island, but we hope to build on that initial success next year.

Horseshoe Island is home to the northernmost royal tern colony in the hemisphere and the colony has grown in size each year. In 2024, CWF joined New Jersey Fish and Wildlife (NJFW) and The Wetlands Institute (TWI) to band royal tern chicks, the first time that royal terns have been banded in the state. With their newly minted blue field readable bands, we are now able to track movements and longevity of “our royals.”  Under NJFW’s direction, adult piping plovers were also banded at Horseshoe for the first time this year. Lastly, led by TWI, black skimmer chicks were once again banded on the island.

The island grew exponentially this year, it is now at least twice the size it was when monitoring began in 2021. The birds took advantage of the expanded habitat, upwards of 1400 state endangered black skimmers nested there in 2024, easily making it the largest skimmer colony in the state. And nearly 600 skimmer chicks fledged from the site, making it the most successful year to date for skimmers on Horseshoe Island. Large least and common tern colonies were also present. And American oystercatchers have increased from 6 to 16 breeding pairs since 2021; 2024 being the most productive year yet with 24 fledglings being recorded. Nearly every part of the island was in use, even more so if you factor in migratory and staging shorebirds that often crowd the tidal zones on the outer edges of the island and the interior lagoons for foraging.

Monitoring and management of the island is done as a partnership between CWF, NJFW, and Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. For more information about the island, read the recently released 2024 report.

by Todd Pover, Senior Wildlife Biologist

New Jersey Fish and Wildlife has released their annual reports for the 2024 beach nesting bird season and the results were mixed. Piping plovers had one of their worst seasons on record in New Jersey since federal listing in 1986. Least terns also fared poorly, while black skimmers and American oystercatchers posted more promising breeding results.

According to the state report, piping plovers recorded their lowest population in New Jersey in 2024, at just 89 pairs, and statewide productivity was poor, as well, at just 0.54 chicks fledged per pair, third lowest on record. The state’s piping plover population has fluctuated greatly in the past five years, reaching 137 pairs in 2021, close to the peak of 144 pairs, only to now fall to the historic low. While the low pair count is concerning enough in its own right, this year’s poor productivity also doesn’t bode well for next year, as productivity is often strongly linked to short-term population changes for piping plovers. Productivity during the 2024 breeding season was well below both the long-term New Jersey average (1.01) and the federal recovery goal (1.50). Furthermore, productivity has been poor over the past several years, putting future population increases at risk.

Pair counts dropped along nearly the entire Jersey coast, with Sandy Hook having one of the most dramatic losses from 34 pairs in 2023 to 14 in 2024. The population loss there is especially troubling given Sandy Hook was once a stronghold for the state, its piping plover population has been trending downward from just over 50 pairs about a decade ago. Productivity was also very poor at Sandy Hook in 2024, just 0.50 chicks per pair, again this site used to be one of New Jerseys’ productivity hotspots for piping plovers. Holgate, a Unit of the Edwin B. Forsythe NWR, and one of the sites monitored by CWF, continued its recent trend of having the most breeding plovers in the state, with 48 pairs or 54% of the state’s population in 2024. Unfortunately, it experienced especially bad productivity, producing just 0.35 chicks per pair. One of the notable highlights in the state was the Barnegat Light Habitat Restoration Area, a site CWF has had a lead role in creating and maintaining, where 5 pairs produced 10 fledgling or 2.00 per pair.

Although New Jersey’s least tern population was surprisingly robust this year with 1,436 total adults recorded, two concerning recent trends for this colonial species continued in 2024. The number of colonies dropped to just 11, the lowest since 1976. Productivity for the state’s least terns was poor, only 146 fledglings were recorded. The highlight was the TNC South Cape May Meadows site, where 80 fledglings were produced.

Black skimmers were also only present at just a few colonies in New Jersey in 2024 – three known active colonies at Holgate, Horseshoe Island, and Stone Harbor Point – the lowest number of colonies documented since 1976. On the other hand, their population, with 2341 adults, was on the high side of the past 20-year range and they had a very good season productivity-wise. Strong results were seen at all three colonies, resulting in nearly 1000 fledglings produced overall. Horseshoe Island had the state’s largest colony with 1,347 breeding adults, helping demonstrate the importance of the recent conservation efforts at this relatively new site.

American oystercatcher data are more difficult to assess, as only a portion of the state’s breeding population is monitored, with most of the marsh nesting breeders, which account for a significant portion, left unmonitored. At 155 pairs in 2024, those oystercatchers regularly monitored – primarily the sandy beach strand population – continued their steady long-term growth trend over the past two decades or so since regular monitoring began in New Jersey.

Productivity was also strong for the oystercatchers in New Jersey in 2024, clocking in at just over 0.50 chicks fledged per pair, which is the recovery target. As a long-lived species, annual productivity goals are lower for American oystercatchers, compared to the shorter-lived piping plovers. Among the highlights for American oystercatchers in New Jersey this year were Holgate with 53 pairs, the most in the state, producing 0.79 fledglings per pair and Horseshoe Island recording an average of 1.50 fledglings from 16 pairs, both of these being sites CWF helped monitor and manage.

Read the full 2024 NJ Piping Plover Nesting Results

Read the full 2024 Beach Nesting Bird Project Report

by Emmy Casper, Wildlife Biologist

Those who have followed CWF’s work throughout the years know how important bird banding can be for wildlife biologists and conservationists. The practice, which involves placing metal and/or color bands on a bird’s legs, can provide useful information about that bird’s life history, site fidelity, and movement. Typically, banded shorebirds are equipped with a unique alphanumeric code or color combination (kind of like a name tag), which enables scientists to track an individual bird throughout its lifetime. For those monitoring New Jersey’s beach-nesting bird populations, bird banding greatly enhances the quality and accuracy of our productivity data, which allows us to make better-informed decisions regarding management. 

Continue reading “Lessons Learned from a Summer of Banding American Oystercatchers”

By Todd Pover, Senior Wildlife Biologist 

CWF has played a major role in helping monitor breeding American oystercatchers in New Jersey ever since surveys were initiated in the state just over two decades ago in the early 2000’s. Most of the statewide effort, conducted by a variety of partners, has been focused on pairs nesting on the sandy barrier beaches of the Atlantic Coast, in conjunction with efforts there to monitor and manage other beach nesting birds, such as piping plovers and least terns. These sites are often those beaches that are highly recreated and most used by beachgoers, public beaches where these species need added protection to hatch nests and raise their young chicks.