Category: Beach Nesting Birds

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.

Continue reading “Expanding the Search for American Oystercatchers Breeding in New Jersey”

by Todd Pover, Senior Wildlife Biologist

Winter maintenance of the Barnegat Light habitat restoration site is a key element in the project’s success to benefit New Jersey’s piping plovers and other beach-nesting birds. The original project – clearing about 40 acres of dense beach vegetation and dunes to create an early-successional habitat favored by plovers and adding “ponds” to create foraging opportunities – was completed over two winters in 2019 and 2020. Each winter since, we have returned to the site for a short period, typically a week or so, to thin vegetation and reestablish foraging habitat along the pond edges in advance of nesting birds returning for the season.

This year was no exception, I was on-site in late January and early February to guide a bulldozer operator to prepare the site for plovers. Although the maintenance work we do each year is similar, the details and nuances of it vary quite a bit. Last winter, for example, one of the foraging ponds was completely sanded over from fall and early winter storms, so we spent most of the time re-digging that. This year, the ponds were in much better shape, so we had more time to focus on clearing out thick vegetation that had crept back into the site to improve the nesting substrate.

Continue reading “A Return to Barnegat Light to Get the Beach Ready for Plovers”

by Todd Pover, Senior Wildlife Biologist

This year was an especially challenging one for beach nesting birds in New Jersey. Most of the species fared poorly on a statewide basis, and even though they can withstand periodic down years, several trends are worrisome to biologists and wildlife managers.

The state’s piping plover breeding population remained the same as last year with 118 pairs, which is also about the same as the long-term average since federal listing. However, productivity was just 0.53 chicks fledged per pair, the second lowest since federal listing and well below the levels believed necessary to grow the population. Of particular concern, productivity has been low for three consecutive years after a number of years of above average success. Productivity is one of the main drivers of population (up or down) and small populations are especially sensitive to even small changes, so it is expected that the population is likely to drop over the next few years, further stagnating plover recovery in the state.

Meanwhile, there was a record number (53) of breeding pairs of piping plovers at Holgate, a unit of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, that is monitored by CWF through a cooperative agreement with the Refuge. This positive trend, almost a four-fold increase has occurred since Superstorm Sandy enhanced the habitat for plovers at the site, has been an ongoing highlight for the state in recent years. Nonetheless, it has not been accompanied by similar increases elsewhere in the state, so it has not led to any statewide recovery. Productivity for the large concentration of piping plovers at Holgate was above the statewide average in 2023 but the lowest level over the past decade, so it was also a down year for this site, where expectations typically run high that it will help boost statewide productivity.

Continue reading “New Jersey’s Beach Nesting Birds Struggle in 2023”

by Todd Pover, Senior Wildlife Biologist

This marked the second year that CWF worked in close partnership with New Jersey Fish and Wildlife and Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge (EBF) to monitor and manage birds on Horseshoe Island. The island, located just offshore on the southern edge of the Little Egg Inlet, has quickly become one of the most important sites for beach nesting birds in the state, as well as a critical resting and feeding site for migratory shorebirds.

Horseshoe Island hosted the state’s largest black skimmer (state endangered) colony this year with just over 1400 total adults or about 700 pairs. Although flooding and some avian predators impacted the overall nesting success at the island, at least 225 skimmer chicks “fledged” from the site. Horseshoe’s skimmer fledglings, along with those from nearby Holgate, a unit of EBF, and especially from Stone Harbor Point in Cape May County, made 2023 a moderately good productivity year for black skimmers in New Jersey.

Continue reading “A Return to Horseshoe Island”

by Emmy Casper, Wildlife Biologist

This year, CWF embarked on a new, ambitious project to monitor and characterize the previously understudied population of American oystercatchers nesting along the Delaware Bayshore. Since so little is known about this breeding population, we had a lot of ground to cover this first field season, both physically and metaphorically. One of the goals of the project is to characterize threats to oystercatcher nest success on the bayshore, whether it be predators, flooding, or something else entirely. It sounds straightforward, but when you consider the span of the project (35 sites across approximately 45 miles of bayshore), monitoring nesting pairs gets a bit more challenging. That’s where game cameras come in.

Game cameras are an extremely useful tool for wildlife monitoring. Cameras deployed at nest sites can provide valuable information about oystercatcher behavior, predator presence, and nest fate (whether the nest hatched or was lost prior to hatching). This is especially important for our Delaware Bay sites, many of which are remote and cannot be monitored as frequently as other locations. Game cameras enhance our in-the-field monitoring and can pinpoint the true cause of nest loss that would otherwise be difficult to determine in the field. Accurate knowledge of nest fate and predator presence is crucial for understanding which factors significantly impact oystercatcher success along the bayshore.

Continue reading “Candid Camera: The Role of Game Cameras in American Oystercatcher Monitoring”

By Todd Pover, Senior Wildlife Biologist

With about 50 pairs of both piping plovers and American oystercatchers nesting this year at Holgate, a unit of the Edwin B. Forsythe NWR, CWF’s seasonal staff that monitors breeding activity for the Refuge has been working at a non-stop pace. We asked them to take a short break from their field tasks to reflect on their season, for some this is their first experience with beach nesting birds. Specifically, they were asked about their favorite and most surprising things about the birds, so far. Read their responses below, including a little twist of the “least favorite” thing in one case.

Continue reading “Beach Nesting Birds- an Insider’s Look from CWF’s Seasonal Monitors”

By Sherry Tirgrath, Wildlife Biologist

As we approach the official, and unofficial, beginning of summer, many warm-weather loving citizens of New Jersey are pulling out their swimwear, purchasing their SPF and preparing to flock to the Jersey Shore and contribute to some of the worst traffic seen around the country. It’s important, however, to take a step back and remind oneself to be certain that their beach activities will not affect the livelihood of other creatures that are just trying to survive in the only habitat that can support them. Both Memorial Day Weekend and July 4^th holidays occur during the season that beach-nesting birds are incubating eggs and raising chicks. This makes for some conflict between beachgoers and coastal wildlife, so it’s necessary to bring more awareness to the presence of the birds and the importance of giving them space.

Beach-nesting birds are called just that because they depend on undisturbed, sparsely vegetated, and stabile coastline to breed, lay eggs, and raise their young. They nest directly in the sand and their eggs are sand-colored and camouflaged against predators. This also makes them difficult for people to see, and without proper monitoring and protection measures, they can wind up being run over or stepped on. Small chicks, like those of the piping plover, are tiny and very mobile shortly after hatching. While the parents do their best at corralling their chicks and keeping them away from people, sometimes the chicks wind up under a beachgoer’s umbrella seeking shade or wandering too close to potential danger. Anyone with small children would understand the difficulty in keeping their kids from running off somewhere they’re not supposed to go, especially when they can have up to four of them at once. The chicks must forage to feed themselves, so being very mobile increases the likelihood of them finding small invertebrates to eat.

Continue reading “How to Advocate for Beach-nesting Birds During the Holiday Weekends”

by Todd Pover, Senior Wildlife Biologist

Horseshoe Island, located just offshore of Little Beach on the southern edge of the Little Egg Inlet, is teeming with wildlife again this year. Last year, under a five-year Management Rights Agreement secured from the state’s Tidelands Resource Council, the site was closed to the public from March 1- September 30 to benefit wildlife, in particular endangered and at-risk beach nesting birds and migratory shorebirds. The seasonal public closure of the island and its surrounding tidal areas is in place again this season.

Continue reading “Horseshoe Island- A Haven for Beach Nesting Birds”