Fencing removal and requesting data

The Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds and a bunch of ever-intrepid volunteers recently joined the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection in removing the string fencing and Piping Plover exclosures from Morse Point in West Haven. We also assisted CT DEEP and The Nature Conservancy with the effort at Griswold Point in Old Lyme. Both of these removals came late in the season for a very good reason as many Least Terns nested at both sites, and some of our waterbirds cleared out only a few days before. We seem to have had a wonderful year for Least Terns in particular.

Here are some of action shots from the work parties from Audubon Connecticut Director of Bird Conservation Patrick Comins and Connecticut Audubon Society Conservation Technician Scott Kruitbosch:

We had both young children and teens helping us out often this year, the next generation!

A beautiful day at Sandy and Morse Points

Packing it up for the season

Before we know it we will be taking the gear back out of the vehicles in 2013

Semipalmated Sandpipers at Griswold Point

Loads of Monarchs in Old Lyme! We watched for butterflies while working and saw some cool coastal vagrants like Cloudless Sulphurs while in West Haven

Fording the channel at Griswold Point

Michael Brooks carrying a bunch

Followed by Sean Graesser doing the same

A beautiful day in Old Lyme as well

The journey back

It certainly does not seem like six months has passed to us, but in another six months we will be well underway with monitoring the first-arriving coastal waterbirds, with Piping Plovers and American Oystercatchers filtering in to beaches everywhere. Until that time we have a tremendous amount of work to do, with two more months in the field monitoring some of these species as they depart plus conducting International Shorebird Surveys before report writing, presentations, analysis, mapping, number-crunching, and more, all while planning for 2013!

If you have yet to submit some of your data or information from the 2012 field season please email it to us at ctwaterbirds@gmail.com as soon as you can. Additionally, if you would like to submit the hours you participated in the project you can do so as well. If you regularly submitted all of your surveys we can calculate this ourselves, but if you spent extra time on the beach or did not send us all of your data, we would like this hourly total as well please, thank you!

Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds, Audubon Connecticut and the Connecticut Audubon Society partnering to improve conditions for coastal waterbirds in Connecticut.