Three young osprey chicks found themselves without their parents after a utility pole nest caught fire at the National Guard Training Center (NGTC) in Sea Girt, NJ. Osprey often choose utility poles as nesting structures because of the 360° view they offer. Fires caused by the nests, composed mostly of dried sticks and seagrass, aren’t uncommon. Because of the safety hazard imposed by the nest, it was removed from the utility pole at the NGTC with three healthy chicks inside. The chicks were approximately a week to ten days old when removed from the nest and were brought temporarily to The Raptor Trust in Millington by Charles Appleby, Chief of the Environmental Bureau of the NJ Department of Military and Veterans Affairs (NJDMAVA) to be cared for while a new nesting platform could be built. Reuniting the chicks with their parents in a safe nest box would give them their best chance at survival.
Three young osprey chicks were removed from a hazardous nest.
Osprey 52/K. September 5, 2022. Photo by Chris Kelly.
In 2014, we began to band osprey nestlings produced at nests within the Barnegat Bay watershed with auxiliary bands. This was an effort which came about from the interest of Jim Verhagen, a LBI resident and wildlife biographer. He wondered why young ospreys were not banded with color, field readable bands, like some endangered raptors, including bald eagles and peregrine falcons. This spawned Project RedBand, an osprey banding and re-sighting project. The goal of the project was to learn more about ospreys when they are alive while engaging coastal residents in their management. Just under 500 young ospreys were banded with red auxiliary bands from 2014-2020 from nests all along the Barnegat Bay estuary.
‘Tis the season for osprey nest platform repairs — and being thankful for the volunteers who make it happen!
by Ben Wurst, Habitat Program Manager
AmeriCorps Watershed Ambassadors clean out nesting material from a 20-30 year old nest platform.
After migratory birds depart, leaves fall and northwest winds prevail, a small group of dedicated volunteers descend on our coastal saltmarshes. They’re there to maintain osprey nest platforms. Around 75% of our nesting ospreys rely on these wooden structures to reproduce. They were used to help jumpstart the early recovery efforts of ospreys in coastal New Jersey, where much of their native habitat was lost to development in the 1950-60s. Today many of these platforms are reaching their life span or are very close.
Piping plover chick foraging along wrack line in Barnegat Light.
CWF Biologist Todd Pover and the Barnegat Light Habitat Restoration Project are back in the news with a wonderful write-up by Juliet Kaszas-Hoch on TheSandpaper.net.
With major construction wrapping in late-2019, we’re now seeing the project’s positive impact on the local piping plover population. Only time will tell just how successful the restoration truly is, but until then we will continue to chart it’s progress and do what we can to make life better for New Jersey’s beach nesters.
Read an except of article here and remember to check out the video update on the project linked below!
With fall on its way, most piping plovers and other migratory coastal birds have headed south, where they will remain for the duration of the winter months. While they’re gone, other species will happily utilize the new pond feature and habitat site along the inlet in Barnegat Lighthouse State Park created specifically to benefit beach-nesting birds such as plovers.
The Barnegat Light Habitat Restoration Project is a collaborative effort led by Todd Pover, Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey senior wildlife biologist, and Brooke Maslo, Rutgers University assistant professor of ecology, in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the N.J. Division of Fish and Wildlife.
As Pover explained in a recent blog post on conservewildlifenj.org,
the goal of the project, begun two years ago, was to enhance breeding
habitat near Long Beach Island’s north-end inlet “by clearing out the
vegetation and re-grading the sand, because this once important breeding
site had become overgrown and was no longer suitable for piping plovers
to nest. Plans also called for building a shallow pond to create
productive foraging habitat for chicks (to) be protected from human
disturbance.”
NOTE: Handling of piping plovers, as shown in the photo in this post, was done as part of an approved research project and in a manner consistent with established protocols.
Today is designated World Shorebirds Day!
Here at The Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey we are proud of our ongoing conservation efforts with piping plovers and red knots, both imperiled shorebirds. Along with our partners, we are doing our best to keep these species in our future, but our work is not done, as shorebird species all around the world are in steep decline. Habitat across the range, critical for their survival, is under siege from development, commercial uses, and human recreational activity.
Click on the link below to hear what CWF Senior Wildlife Biologist Todd Pover had to say about piping plovers, their success this past season in New Jersey and challenges over the decades, as part of a series of interviews compiled for World Shorebird Day!
