Schedule your monitoring

Today the Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection completed successful training sessions for many of our fantastic past and new volunteer monitors. We are now working on scheduling everyone to their desired beaches and dates. Please email us at ctwaterbirds@gmail.com with your requested locations and schedule. We hope to complete scheduling for most by April 1.

 Here is a list of available monitoring locations:

• Sherwood Island State Park in Westport
• Pleasure Beach in Bridgeport
• Long Beach in Stratford
• Russian Beach in Stratford
• Milford Point in Milford
• Silver Sands State Park in Milford
• Sandy/Morse Points in West Haven
• Griswold Point in Old Lyme
• Bluff Point State Park in Groton

Long Beach, Milford Point, Sandy/Morse Points and Bluff Point typically have the greatest need for monitors. Remember that we would like to have all the data we can on Piping Plovers, American Oystercatchers, and beginning when they arrive in May, Least and Common Terns. When we begin walking our beaches we want to monitor only in "good" weather to protect both people and birds - heavy rain or thunderstorms in the area or temperatures below 50 or above 90 mean you should skip that day.

If you could not attend today's training we would of course still love to have you as a volunteer in 2014 and you can sign up throughout the season via email. There will be a field/beach training session open to all volunteers on April 12 at Sandy/Morse Points in West Haven with final details and time to be determined and sent out to you soon. We can also offer you training online and in person when possible with master monitors who have past experience. Please contact us at ctwaterbirds@gmail.com to be paired up with someone.

Here are training videos from 2012 - the most critical information is the same with some details having changed:
Part 1: http://vimeo.com/38652684 
Part 2: http://vimeo.com/38662688
Part 3: http://vimeo.com/38691714

Remember to check out the right-hand column of this blog for field datasheets, which will be updated shortly, and other important state and federal forms. If you cannot download any of these forms or have problems attempting to please email us at ctwaterbirds@gmail.com and we can send them as email attachments.

We will start our regular and weekly email updates with general information and bird data soon. Thank you all! We could not accomplish any of this without our tremendous volunteers.