Our Team is using Science-based Methods to Elevate the Marsh and Restore the Balance of High and Low Elevation
by Lindsay McNamara, Communications Manager
To restore Thompsons Beach, along New Jersey’s Delaware Bayshore, our team removed debris from the beach, removed rubble from the road leading to the beach, and placed over 40,000 cubic yards of sand (weighing over 9 million pounds) onto the beach. We were filled with pride when we saw sanderlings and ruddy turnstones feeding this August on horseshoe crab larvae on our newly restored beach. We were delighted to learn that this spring, Thompsons Beach had the highest abundance of horseshoe crab egg clusters out of all the beaches that our team monitors on Delaware Bay.
How do we keep the momentum going? How do we ensure our restoration work at Thompsons Beach yields long-term, sustainable results? The answer is clear: we protect the backbone that the beach sits on — the salt marsh behind the beach.
This time of year, many beachgoers thrill to the sight of pods of bottlenose dolphins swimming past, each animal porpoising over the moving sea’s surface before it disappears back under the surf for another few moments. Recent weeks have brought some lucky New Jerseyans the chance to watch seemingly never-ending pods of dolphins swim past, one after another like some Atlantic Serengeti.
About the last place you might expect to see a bottlenose dolphin is a stone’s throw from the commuters speeding past on eight traffic lanes of Route 18 on the Old Bridge – East Brunswick border in the central heart of the state, a good 20-minute drive from the nearest bay coast. Here, amidst the parking lots and criss-crossing thoroughfares and working-class stores, crowds of families and couples and kids young and old lined up two deep, day after day, last week along a narrow bridge over the South River. All to watch a wild bottlenose dolphin from a closer vantage point than most of us will ever get outside of an aquarium or amusement park.
Every 50 seconds or so, an anxious murmur gave way to gasps, fingers pointing, cell phone cameras clicking, and cries of “There it is!” The dolphin breached the surface for just long enough to get its necessary air – a second, two at most – before vanishing again. For several days the dolphin returned, as the media reported on it and the crowds grew larger.
While the dolphin swam underwater, talk amongst the visitors ranged from awe – “I saw it Mom!” and “He’s bigger than I thought!” – to curiosity – “Are they supposed to be here?” and “Where will it come up next?” – to emotion – “I can’t believe we’re lucky enough to see this!” and “It’s beautiful!”
But the discussions also presciently invoked fear and concern – “Is it sick?” “Stranded?” and “Shouldn’t it be with the other dolphins?”
As it turned out, the dolphin was indeed sick. It was dying. Trained volunteers tried to shepherd it out to more accommodating waters, but the dolphin couldn’t make it back out to the open water from its final resting place.
The dolphin was considered to be emaciated, and will be studied with a necropsy. We have no insight yet on whether the dolphin suffered from morbillivirus, a disease which has claimed the lives of hundreds of bottlenose dolphins in recent years along the East Coast.
My son and I watched the dolphin on a Friday evening, not long before dusk. Later that weekend I learned that the dolphin had died the very next day.
Yet in spending its last few days as it did, the dolphin became an unexpected guest for a local inland community that never anticipated such a marine visitor – but cherished the chance to greet it. All told, the dolphin spent much of a week in its retirement home upstream in the South River, in the shadow of Route 527 to the steady hum of Route 18 traffic, visited and admired by many hundreds of people.
Just like past New Jersey visitors, similar to the Trenton beluga whale and the Merrill Creek Reservoir snowy owl, the South River dolphin found an out-of-the-way place that it could call home, albeit temporarily.
The South River dolphin has finally moved on – but it will be remembered.
David Wheeler is the Executive Director of Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey.
New Video Showcases CWF’s Work to Protect the Garden State’s Wildlife
By: Lindsay McNamara, Communications Manager
Conserve Wildlife Foundation is thrilled to release a new video as an “introduction” to our work, keeping New Jersey’s wildlife in our future! We are a private, non-profit organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of New Jersey’s endangered and threatened wildlife and the habitats they depend on.
As the video demonstrates, we utilize science, research, wildlife management, habitat restoration, education and volunteer stewardship to help conserve and protect a variety of at-risk species of wildlife in New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the nation.
The video was produced by Tyler Grimm, a video intern with Conserve Wildlife Foundation.
Want to get involved? Learn more about Conserve Wildlife Foundation on our website.
Lindsay McNamara is the Communications Manager for Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey.
50 Fifth Grade Students from Ann Street School in Newark Visit Island Beach State Park
by Lindsay McNamara, Communications Manager
Ann Street School students taking a “shellfie” on the beach.
Remember the awe and wonder of your first visit to the beach? For many fifth graders from Newark, they experienced just that feeling this summer thanks to Conserve Wildlife Foundation (CWF) and PSEG.
Through CWF’s WILDCHILD program, over 50 fifth grade students from Ann Street School in Newark spent a day at Island Beach State Park and learned more about nature and human impact on New Jersey’s wildlife and environment.
The Ann Street School students were thrilled at the sight of an active osprey nest, observed through a spotting scope, as CWF’s Habitat Program Manager and osprey expert Ben Wurst detailed the amazing ongoing recovery of New Jersey’s osprey population. The students also went on guided maritime forest hikes, toured the Island Beach State Park Nature Center, and connected their everyday actions to the larger environment.
“There is nothing quite as evocative and inspiring for a child as spending a day at the seashore, feeling the sand under your feet with the tangy fragrances of salt marsh and surf,” said David Wheeler, CWF Executive Director. “This connection with nature, and chance to experience the abundant wildlife of Island Beach — from red foxes to horseshoe crabs to black skimmers — can help our next generation of outdoor leaders become engaged with the natural world around us.”
Island Beach State Park interpretive staff led enlightening programs on the beach, where many students collected shells and walked in the sand for the first time in their lives. Interpretive staff also took the Ann Street School students seining on Barnegat Bay, where they dragged a large seine net out into the bay. Students got to hold mud snails, minnows and hermit crabs, and microorganisms in learning firsthand about the marine life in Barnegat Bay.
“The visit to Island Beach State Park is a culminating experience for my students. They spend the year researching and learning more about wildlife for the Species on the Edge Art and Essay Contest, and then the trip brings it all together. The trip is where they can see the different ecosystems and animals that we have talked about throughout the year,” stated Sharon Cardoso, Ann Street School Teacher. “The students look forward to WILDCHILD, it is an incentive for them and they are motivated to keep their grades up so they can attend.”
The WILDCHILD program is made possible by generous support from PSEG.
“The students involved in WILDCHILD traditionally do not have the opportunity to have access to green space. PSEG works with organizations like Conserve Wildlife Foundation to help engage children in environmental education,” said Russ Furnari, Manager, Environmental policy, PSEG. “Through the support of the PSEG Foundation, we work with Conserve Wildlife Foundation to help get kids out into nature to learn about endangered species and that teach them to protect nature and protect the environment.”
2015 Species on the Edge Art & Essay Contest Winners Represented on New Story Map
By: Kathleen Wadiak, Wildlife Conservation Intern
Conserve Wildlife Foundation’s 2015 Species on the Edge Art and Essay Contest gave fifth grade students from across the state the opportunity to research an endangered species and submit a drawing and essay written from the animal’s perspective. Meant to support awareness of endangered species in students, the Species on the Edge Art & Essay Contest encourages fifth graders to think like wildlife biologists as they gather research and learn about pressing environmental issues. The results of this contest are the subject of our newest story map!
This interactive map allows the user to click on icons to see participating schools, first and second winners from each county, and honorable mention entries. Scrolling through the text on the left side changes the content of the points on the map. A click on each map point brings up more information, like the number of classes from each school that submitted an entry. While scrolling through the list of winners, users can even click on the schools’ icons to bring up the students’ names, essays, and artwork.
The format of this story map is simple and easy to use, allowing for an interesting, interactive way to display the hard work of students across New Jersey.
Delaware Bay Shorebird Project Team Finishes 2015 Banding Season
By: Dr. Larry Niles, LJ Niles Associates LLC
All our efforts to help shorebirds on Delaware Bay this year couldn’t have been better rewarded – nearly every red knot left the bay in good condition and in one of the earliest departures in the 19 years of the Project. We counted just over 24,000 knots in our aerial count of the entire Bayshore on May 26th. Just two days later, most had left and we could find only a few hundred, feeding on eggs like human shoppers feed on bargains at a half-price sale. By May 31st, virtually all were gone, along with the ruddy turnstones, sanderlings and semipalmated sandpipers. The beaches had an odd, deserted feel after the frenzy of the preceding days.
Photo by Jan van der Kam from Life on Delaware Bay
A good thing for birds and all those who love birds. The end of the shorebird stopover season also means the end of our shorebird team – at least for another year. All through the week, we lost team members—the North Americans left by car, those from other continents by air. Those who stayed shifted from research to manual labor: cleaning and storing equipment, closing up the rental houses, and reconnecting lost items to their owners.
Photo by Kevin Karlson
Will our project continue? Now in our 19th year of work on the bay, one must recognize the realities of time’s passage. Clive Minton just cleared 80, and the rest of the original team will soon follow. This author, who started at relatively young 44, is now pushing his mid-sixties. Death visited our team this year with the passing of Allan Baker. Surely the rest of us will start “falling off the perch” as Clive is fond of saying.
Allan Baker, the Senior Curator of Ornithology and Head of the Department of Natural History at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum suddenly and unexpectedly died in 2014. His career included many significant achievements including early work that helped build a scientific case that overharvested horseshoe crabs caused the decline of red knot numbers. Photo from Wader Study.
And yet, all committed to return for a 20th year. I worry over the fundamentals: our funding remains uncertain, the listing of knots as Threatened in the U.S. creates new regulatory hurdles, and N.J. politics seem to get more fractious every minute. Will there be a 20th year of this project?
The answer starts and ends with the willingness of our team to do it again. It starts there because good ideas and projects always seem to find support; I know we will find a way. It ends there because this team provides the best chance of a strong scientific underpinning for protection. Our team includes some of the most important shorebird scientists in the world. At our dinner soirees (generously provided by Jane Galetto’s Citizens United team), Ph.D.’s are as common as empty beer bottles. It’s no surprise that conversation drills deep into conservation biology, behavioral ecology, migration physiology, stopover ecology, virology and many other subjects of interest to all our team, both scientists, old and young, and lovers of good science.
In many ways, the lives of our team members revolve around birds. The Delaware Bay Shorebird Project provides us a meaningful excuse to pull together once more. Our team members love birds, and do everything they can to help them. It’s been that way for 19 years, and it is this commitment that has led to this year’s results.
This graph plots the percentage of red knots caught between May 26th and May 28th that have achieved at least 180 grams against the year of the catch. The 2015 result is still an estimate.
For the first time in 19 years, red knots left in a condition similar to the lucky ones migrating through before the fishing industry decimated horseshoe crabs in 1997. After that year, the populations of knots, turnstones, semipalmated sandpipers, and sanderlings fell off a cliff. For the last four years, however, the terribly reduced populations of shorebirds have been in rough balance with equally reduced number of horseshoe crabs breeding on the Bay. Consequently, the percentage of knots reaching the threshold weight of 180 g has climbed. (Knots need at least this weight to reach the Arctic and breed successfully.) From a low of just 5% making weight in 2003, they’ve clawed their way upward 30% in 2010, 50% in 2013 and now this year’s 90%.
Fat knot on the scale by Philippe Sitters
One must be cautious about the interpretation of this number but the catch of red knots on which it was based were truly fat birds! One weighed 226 grams, nearly 100 grams higher than its fat free weight. Whatever the figure it was a good season for both birds and the people who love them.
An Update from the 2015 Delaware Bay Shorebird Project Team
By: Dr. Larry Niles, LJ Niles Associates LLC
Clive Minton is fond of saying, “the knots vote with their wings” as a way of saying knots concentrate in the best places for knots. Of course it’s true, animals move to the habitats they find most suitable, nature leaves little room for anything but. Sometimes however, animals use a habitat only because they have little choice — in other words, they are making the best of a bad situation. The job of a good wildlife biologist is to understand the difference. Unfortunately, it’s often not obvious.
Red Knot Photo by: Jan van der Kam
In all the places studied by this author — Tierra del Fuego, the Arctic, and many places in between — knots distinguish themselves as highly selective habitat specialists. There are many practical reasons for this: usually knots occur in flocks and thus require more space than many other species. More importantly, as they put on weight for their incredibly long-distance flights, they often push the limit of safe wing-loading (body weight to wing area). This makes them vulnerable to predators, both real and imagined. They need more flying space, more space for advance warning of a predator’s presence. They demand special roost habitats as well, especially night roosts that are free from disturbance and have good sight distances. Altogether they need more.
Red knots roost on a sandy spit on Egg Island, one of the largest contigous area of marsh in the mid Atlantic. Half of the bay’s shorebird population roost on Egg Island and then feed on the various beaches around Fortescue.
In Delaware Bay, they need all this, but above all they need good horseshoe crab egg densities. In the mid 2000’s when shorebird numbers were high, the demand for those eggs exceeded the production from the rapidly diminishing crab population. Knots wandered the bay like homeless refugees. Competition for eggs drew tens of thousands of birds to places unused by knots in healthier times.
Mispillion Harbor
Mispillion Harbor, Delaware, for example, in some years supported much of the knot population in the Bay because it acts like a funnel-trap for crabs. Crabs wandered into the harbor through long stone jetties finding themselves in crab breeding heaven, sandy shoals in a closed space, free from wind-generated waves that normally leave them upside down. The egg-laying frenzy caused eggs to reach epic densities, thus preparing many shorebirds for their onward journey to the Arctic. Tens of thousands of shorebird packed into Mispillion Harbor in densities so high that one could smell ammonia off-gassing from the amount of bird waste.
But for knots, Mispillion left a lot to be desired. The same jetties that protect the inner harbor from wind-driven waves also provide low-flying raptors the cover to pounce on flocks before they can easily react. Fat birds make easy prey for peregrine falcons, who themselves struggle to keep up with the insatiable hunger of rapidly growing chicks.
Photo by: Jan van der Kam
But even as shorebird numbers fell in response to the reduced crab numbers, egg densities improved in other places. Knots reassessed their choices and voted with their wings.
This is why this year’s high count of red knots on the New Jersey side of the Bay are so important. Two days ago, Mark Peck, Joe Smith and I flew the entire Bay to count knots, ruddy turnstones and sanderlings. We counted over 24,000 knots, with 21,000 of these using the beaches managed by the many groups that take part in shorebird management on the New Jersey shore of Delaware Bay.
I am not saying this is a competition between two states — I’m saying the numbers serve as assurance that all our hard work is paying off. It’s a confirmation that the beach restoration projects, the Shorebird Stewards project, the reTURN the Favor crab rescue project, and more are bearing fruit. These coordinated strategies are led by Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey, American Littoral Society, Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, New Jersey Audubon Society, the Wetlands Institute, Citizens United to Protect the Maurice River, The Nature Conservancy, as well as Downe Township, Maurice River Township, Middle Township and the Division of Fish and Wildlife, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. This work is funded by the US Department of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the Willliam Penn Foundation. Good work all!
Jim May protects Cook Beach as part of Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey’s Shorebird Stewards project. Each year, the Division of Fish and Wildlife designates beaches that are most important to shorebirds and protects them from disturbance. The shorebird stewards alert Conservation Officers if people refuse to comply, but most of their job is helping people understand the shorebird migration and the needs of shorebirds and crabs.
We now near the end of the stopover season at Delaware Bay. Three days of southerly winds are proving irresistible for many birds. Nearly two-thirds have left and the rest will be gone in a few days. Thanks to the people who love birds and the residents of the Bay, they leave well-prepared for the next stage of their challenging and inspiring lives.
By: Larissa Smith, Wildlife Biologist and Volunteer Manager
Last week ENSP Biologist, Robert Somes and I surveyed a site in Cape May County for the New Jersey threatened butterfly the Frosted Elfin. We found a few flying around near their host plant Batpisia and were lucky to see a female ovipositing eggs.
Frosted Elfin with recently oviposited egg on Baptisia plant@ Robert Somes
An Update on the 2015 Delaware Bay Shorebird Project
By: Dr. Larry Niles, LJ Niles Associates LLC
Despite the threatening forecast of a cold drizzle and strong winds, our team persevered to complete the first bay-wide count of this season. On the New Jersey side of Delaware Bay, we counted 19,077 red knots – the most seen in the state in a decade. With Delaware’s shorebird team recording 2,000 knots along their entire shoreline, the total knot count of 21,077 is not far from the 24,000 seasonal maximum of the last three years.
Red knot aerial counts
This is good news in either of two completely different ways. One explanation is that perhaps most of the knots have already come to the bay. If so, they are in good time to make weight and are getting close to an on-time departure for the Arctic. The alternative is that even more will arrive and we will exceed our counts of the recent past. Good weights promise good Arctic production; more knots offer new hope.
Knots in formation heading off to the Arctic (c) Jan van de Kam
The numbers of ruddy turnstones (12,295) and semipalmated sandpipers (56,788) are also close to the seasonal maxima counts of the recent past, so they too may soon brave the long flight to their Arctic homes. Our cannon-net catches of turnstones, sanderlings and knots point to weights building quickly.
Canon net catchCanon net catchCanon net catch
The weather conditions play with our expectations. For the last few days, high westerly winds have generated beach-pounding waves all along the Cape shore. Its north/south orientation is perfectly perpendicular to the strong winds, and the wind-generated waves shut down horseshoe crab spawning. This forces the birds to seek shelter and better egg densities elsewhere.
Right from the start, the disappearance of the shorebirds we had been seeing intrigued us, for a good wildlife mystery gets consumed in this team like a good bottle of beer. Within hours, Mark Peck and Gwen Binsfeld found the knots south of where we would have expected. The knots, turnstones, sanderlings, and semipalmateds were comfortably riding out the wind storm on the vast, sandy intertidal flats in front of Sunray Beach and Villas. We haven’t seen birds gathering in numbers here since the early 2000’s.
Photo of shorebird team by Kevin Karlson (from bottom right: Mark Fields, Stephanie Feigin, Mark Peck, Clive Minton, Angela Watts, Jeannine Parvin, Christophe Buidin, Alinde Fojtik, Dick Veitch, Barrie Watts, Joanna Burger, Arie Manchen, Steve Gates, Phillipe Sitters, Ana Paula Sousa, Reydson Reis, Chege Wa Karuiki, Susan Taylor, Mandy Dey, Peter Fullagar, Deb Carter, Gwen Binsfeld, Nick Smith, Clara Kienzi, Joe Smith, Larry Niles, Humphrey Sitters, Stefanie Jenkinson, Ally Anderson, David Stallneckt, Gerry Binsfeld, Christian Friis, Chris Davey)
But back to the count. We found shorebirds all along the Bayshore with three areas of concentration. The first was the aforementioned Villas flats. The second was in the Pierces Point to Reeds Beach area, with most in the more southerly portion of the sector. “Not-knots” (mostly semipalmated sandpipers) were seen there in big numbers during the boat survey by Yann Rochpault, Christophe Buidin and Tom Baxter. They saw 12,000 shorebirds along this mostly unpopulated shoreline.
Semi palmated sandpipers along shoreline (c)Jan van de Kam
But the real shorebird wonderland of the bay continues to be Egg Island. Few people see this this vast intertidal marsh, and fewer still appreciate its wonder. Egg Island – actually a peninsula – juts miles out into the bay, nearly to the shipping channel. The marsh cradles one of the most diverse bird faunas of the mid-Atlantic. All along its mucky eastern flank, short-billed dowitchers, dunlin, semipalmated sandpipers, black-bellied plovers, and semipalmated plovers comb the eroded banks for crab eggs drifting in the water column from better crab breeding sites. The crabs themselves attempt to breed in the overhanging edges of the spartina marsh, a lost cause; however, because the muck lacks oxygen and the eggs cannot develop. This is bad for crabs but good for shorebirds because most of the eggs end up on the sod banks, easy prey for shorebirds.
But this week, the wonders of Egg Island overwhelmed us. Our team – Humphrey Sitters, Phillipa Sitters and this blog’s author – wove along the shallow shoreline in our intrepid 17-ft Carolina skiff, counting thousands of shorebirds – 8,226 knots, 4,125 ruddy turnstones, 3,000 sanderlings, and 21,000 semipalmated sandpipers. The flocks swirled around the peninsula’s sandy western shore, alighting, then flying, and then alighting again. It was a shorebird dance that was a wonderful sight for increasingly tired-out shorebird scientists.
Warming weather brings out one of New Jersey’s most misunderstood species
By: Michael Davenport, GIS Program Manager
I recently had the opportunity to accompany Kris Schantz, a biologist with the NJ Endangered and Nongame Species Program, to search for timber rattlesnakes (and northern copperheads) emerging from their dens in northern New Jersey.
Many New Jersey residents are surprised to learn that we have venomous snakes within our state, the most densely populated state in the U.S. We have two venomous species, in fact.
The timber rattlesnake is an Endangered species in New Jersey, while the northern copperhead has a status of Special Concern. To learn more about venomous snakes in New Jersey, please read my blog entry from May 13, 2011 and visit our online field guide:
