Last week we successfully installed an osprey nesting platform on the Manasquan Reservoir. The reservoir supplies water to residents of Monmouth County and can supply up to 30 million gallons of water a day. It’s also home to a variety of wildlife, such as bald eagles, osprey, waterfowl, freshwater mussels, and many other species. Since it’s creation in the early 1990s the many snags offered potential nest sites for ospreys; however, today many of the snags are falling down. The last nest site for ospreys broke in the winter of 2010-11. It was near the environmental center at the reservoir and offered visitors a close view of their nest and reproductive cycle. Since the nest tree broke no pairs have nested on the reservoir. Continue reading “Photo from the Field”
Kristin prepares to release the injured terrapin her Dad found on Rt. 72. Photo courtesy Kristin Ryerson
“What did you do this summer?” was a question I was frequently asked by family, friends and classmates when I recently returned to college this fall. Well, where to begin! Ben Wurst, CWF’s Habitat Program Manager, set a goal this summer to lower the number of road killed Northern Diamondback Terrapins on Great Bay Boulevard in Tuckerton, NJ. In previous studies, 50 terrapins could be killed in one nesting season—the main cause? People. Careless drivers who are either speeding or simply oblivious to the many yellow signs warning them of crossing nesting terrapins and the fact that they are in the middle of an extremely vital wildlife refuge. So, this summer, I had the privilege of being the Great Bay Terrapin Project’s Intern, and my job was to help save nesting terrapins crossing the road and to take valuable data on those I saw. Ben gave me some equipment and the knowledge I would need when working on the road. Through road patrols, educating the public, maintaining the previously installed barrier fencing, painting road signs and data collection, I learned more than I had imagined and had an amazing experience.
Marine debris (specifically plastics) have become a serious problem in coastal areas throughout the world, especially in the Pacific Ocean where gyres create large floating “garbage patches.” I work out on the back bays and salt marshes throughout the coastal region of New Jersey as I help to monitor and manage ospreys and their nesting platforms. Every time I’m out I encounter trash. Most of it accumulates along the wrack line on the higher portions of the marsh where storm surges, high winds, and during spring tides (during full and new moon phases) push it onto the marsh. This debris then makes its way into the nests of ospreys because this is where they collect most of their nesting material.
A glimpse into the life of one adult female terrapin
By Stephanie Egger, Wildlife Biologist
Stephanie Egger prepares to insert a PIT tag into a terrapin in 2004.
Over the summers of 2004 and 2005, as part of my graduate research for Saint Joseph’s University and in partnership with Rutgers University Marine Field Station, I tagged 300 adult female northern diamondback terrapins to gain a better understanding of their nesting movements, nesting events, and road mortality on Great Bay Boulevard in Tuckerton, New Jersey. These terrapins were tagged with PIT tags (Passive Integrated Transponder tags) which are the size of a grain of rice and inserted directly under the skin. The PIT tags are individually numbered and can be read with a hand-held scanner in the field for essentially the life of the terrapin. Some terrapins were nesting more than once per season and generally within 50 meters from their original tagged location, but a few were found great distances (1000 meters) from their initial location (See Szerlag-Egger and McRobert 2007).
Ben Wurst, our Habitat Program Manager, and Kristin Ryerson, a CWFNJ intern, were able to scan some terrapins this summer as part of the Great Bay Terrapin Project and came across one of the terrapins I tagged in 2005! She has survived 7 years (and counting) on Great Bay Boulevard from becoming road kill on a road where 50 terrapins can be killed in a nesting season (See Szerlag and McRobert 2006). The distance between her location in 2005 and 2012 was 826 meters! It appears that she may have emerged from the creek and decided to travel north to nest instead of south (see Google Earth image below). I am hopeful we can continue to monitor the terrapins on Great Bay Boulevard and collect further information on tagged terrapins as it may have management implications for the future.
An adult female terrapin who was PIT tagged in 2005 on Great Bay Boulevard and later recaptured in 2012.
We recently decided to have a photo contest to choose a new cover photo for our Facebook page. We wanted to do this as a way to engage people with our work and generate some conversations around the wildlife photographs we received.
Black Skimmer by Zachary Kirby.
We were thrilled to receive an amazing response to the contest and today we opened voting on 89 photos submitted from across New Jersey. Yes, we received a lot of photos of ospreys which speaks to their photogenic quality and the fact that many photographers are down the shore this season. We also received photographs of a wide range of species – mostly birds but also reptiles, amphibians, insects and a mammal.
The album of 89 photos represents New Jersey’s biodiversity in all its glory. The album also represents New Jersey’s geography and clearly illustrates how habitats occur across the state from the busiest beaches to urban parks and from National Wildlife Refuges to suburban backyards.
Check out our Facebook page and the cover photo contest album. Be sure to LIKE our page and cast your vote for a new cover photo (just “like” the photos you want to vote for). You can vote for as many photos as you want.
The photo with the most likes becomes our cover photo. Voting closes on Friday at 12:00 pm.
I might be a little biased in saying that Bass River State Forest is one of the most beautiful state parks in New Jersey, only because I live in the same town where it’s located. There is so much to explore at BRSF: large pine plantations by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) that helped build NJ’s state parks, Atlantic white-cedar swamps galore, sugar sand, and all the wildlife that occupy pinelands habitats. One new and much different portion of Bass River State Forest is Ballanger Creek, pronounced “Baa-lan’-ger”. The surrounding forested habitat is mostly unfragmented and is comprised of mature pine-oak woodlands. There are some very large pitch pines that cover many species that are shade tolerant like, american holly. Two old freshwater impoundments were drained after Hurricane Irene blew out an earthen dam. Now freshwater wetlands have emerged and atlantic white-cedar seedlings are beginning to sprout.
Common along much of the coast of New Jersey, this site has had a lot of use in its history. A saw mill once operated here in the mid-19th century and in the early 1900s fields along the creek were used for agriculture. It was also used as a dump site for fill and other debris. A house and several out buildings were demolished when the property was acquired by the Green Acres Program in the mid-90s. Since its acquisition the site has not been actively managed for wildlife. That all changed in late 2009 when Conserve Wildlife Foundation of NJ acquired funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to enhance the degraded wildlife habitat on site. We’re all done with the project and there’s a lot to explore here. We invite you to explore this site and enjoy its natural beauty and its wildlife residents. Click on the map to download or print a copy of it. Here is a link to the site via Google Maps.
Compiled by Todd Pover, Beach Nesting Bird Project Manager
American oystercatcher.
The Beach Nesting Bird Project is one of our major initiatives here at the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey. During the spring and summer months, we employ several field technicians to help us carry out our mission of monitoring and protecting endangered piping plovers, least terns, and black skimmers, as well as American oystercatchers. We also help oversee the seasonal staff from the state’s Endangered and Nongame Species Program on this project.
As a slight change of pace for a blog, I thought it would be both fun and insightful to hear a little bit of their perspective from the field. So, I asked everyone from the joint beachnester crew to submit a short entry about what they like and dislike most about the project, as well as a favorite or unique photo. I will kick it off with my thoughts…Because the main goal of the project is to recover at-risk species, obviously the most satisfying aspect of the project is when the birds have a successful year. But that isn’t always the case, so my personal favorite thing is finding the first piping plover nests of the season. Aside from the challenge of actually locating the well-camouflaged nests, those first eggs embody the eternal hope of each new season. Early in the season, before spring tides wash away eggs, predators discover helpless chicks, and the crush of beachgoers squeezes out colonies, you still believe every nest will successfully produce young.We interact with the public on a daily basis on this project and for the most part we meet nice people. But we also deal with our share of people who do not support the effort. Our motto is “share the shore” and, in fact, only a small percentage of our state’s coastline is protected for beach nesting birds and many of the restriction put in place to help the birds are seasonal in nature. Nonetheless, the “plover fence” brings out the worst in some people, and when that anger is directed at you personally it can be pretty unpleasant and frustrating.
By Michael Davenport, Marine Species & GIS Programs Manager
Conserve Wildlife Foundation Intern, Nelson Melendez, and I recently had an opportunity to assist Endangered & Nongame Species Program Biologist Sharon Petzinger in her research on golden-winged warblers, a species just added to the state’s list of Endangered species this year. We were banding males which had been observed previously and had already claimed breeding territories. They were being banded in order to obtain data regarding their distribution and habitat use, as well as other life history information.
Only males were being targeted for banding. Males are territorial during the breeding season and do not tolerate the presence of other male golden-winged warblers. Therefore, in order to catch a male, we would use their own territorial instincts to lure them into a mist net (a mist net looks a little like a volley ball net with much finer netting which becomes invisible to birds if set-up properly).
Once a mist net was set-up near a known golden-winged’s territory, Sharon used a custom-painted “toy” bird to play the role of an unwelcome male visitor. She also used a call play-back, a recording of a male golden-winged’s song. The song would lure the male near the net, and the decoy should bring him right into the net.
We went to several locations in northwest New Jersey where golden-winged warblers had been observed earlier in the year to set-up the mist net. On this particular day, however, luck was not with us for no golden-winged warblers were caught. Several other species were captured however, such as a veery, chestnut-sided warbler, and a Brewster’s warbler. The Brewster’s warbler is actually a hybrid of a golden-winged warbler and a blue-winged warbler. Another hybrid form between those two species is known as Lawrence’s warbler.
CWF Intern, Nelson Melendez, holding a chestnut-sided warbler. Photo by Mike Davenport.
The veery and chestnut-sided warbler were released from the net unharmed. Before the Brewster’s was released, a small aluminum band was placed on its leg and measurements such as wing length and weight were taken.
Warblers are often an overlooked group of birds by some birdwatchers due to their small size and relative difficulty in observing. They are stunningly beautiful however, which becomes apparent when you have the opportunity to view them up-close. They are a very diverse species group with a variety of interesting life histories. There is currently one species (the golden-winged) listed as Endangered in the state and 11 additional species listed as Special Concern. To learn more about them, please visit our on-line field guide links below.
Last Thursday there was a flurry of activity throughout coastal New Jersey. It was one of the peak days of the beginning of the northern diamondback terrapin nesting season. I had scheduled myself to be off to work on projects around my house but ended up working for half the day on our Great Bay Terrapin Conservation Project. Female terrapins were everywhere! They were crossing all over Great Bay Blvd., a 5 mile long road that bisects pristine terrapin habitat. The shoulders of the road are suitable nesting habitat as well, so at times as many as 10-15 terrapins could be seen in one small section of the road. There were so many that one terrapin bumped right into another one on the shoulder of the road!! They were digging nests and laying eggs all over the place. It was certainly a rare sight. Luckily traffic was mild and the weather was clear so there were little road kills. One female fell victim to a Little Egg Harbor Twp. mower who was mowing the edges of the road. This certainly wasn’t the best day to mow the shoulders! Before more terrapins could be killed we contacted LEHT public works and they called off their mower until further notice. On a side note, we have asked the township and the environmental commission to adopt a delayed mowed regime in the past and unfortunately one terrapin died because of this. I even emailed the public works director early last week about nesting activity picking up and I asked for him to please let me know when they were planning to mow so we could have someone walk in front of the mower to be sure no terrapins were hit. On the positive side, we were able to salvage 7 eggs from the terrapin, and they were successfully placed in a hatchery in Loveladies on LBI. We have our fingers crossed that they’ll hatch later this summer!
Finally, we have had more of a presence on Great Bay Blvd this year with the assistance of our new intern, Kristin Ryerson. She is collecting data (size, age, weight, and other data) on terrapins that she encounters while conducting road patrols on Great Bay Blvd. We’ll be using this data to compare it to some collected in Barnegat Bay and past studies that were conducted on the road. Her position is a volunteer position so I really appreciate all of her help so far! We also have volunteers who are acting as “Terrapin Stewards” where they also conduct road patrols to collect sightings of terrapins, educate visitors to the road about terrapins, and they also make sure terrapins safely cross the road. Without their help this project would not be successful!
Volunteers help install innovative new barrier to reduce terrapin road kills
by Ben Wurst, Habitat Program Manager
Last week volunteers from CWF and Exelon-Oyster Creek Generating Station helped to install 1,000 feet of barrier “fencing” along the first stretch of Great Bay Blvd inside Great Bay Blvd Wildlife Management Area. The new barrier is a new design and concept for reptile conservation here in NJ and possibly the rest of N. America. While many other types of barriers have been used by other organizations this type has not. It is a corrugated rigid plastic drainage pipe that was cut in half. It was made in NJ by ADS (Advanced Drainage Solutions) and was purchased through Caterina Supply, a local supplier of the pipe. Funding was provided through a Partners Agreement between Little Egg Harbor Twp. and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (who purchased the pipe). The pipe came pre-cut from ADS and was transported by Eric Schrading with USFWS. To install the pipe we trenched a ditch and then hand dug it to the width of the 10″ pipe. It was then backfilled and screwed together where two pieces met. The main reason from switching from a traditional fence type barrier to this was to reduce future maintenance. Fences are easily damaged by motor vehicles and posts have been stolen or ripped out of the ground, so they take more time to repair throughout the year. This pipe should be maintenance free and hopefully if a car drives over it only minor damage will occur…we hope!!
If you’re interested in using this in your own reptile/amphibian conservation project email me and I’d be happy to help in any way possible!
Thank you to all the volunteers, vendors, and partners who help make this project a success!! To name a few: Home Depot of Manahawkin for donating the trencher for an afternoon, USFWS & Eric Schrading for purchasing and transporting the pipe, and Little Egg Harbor Twp. for their continued support of this project.
