Schedule Your 2015 Monitoring

On Saturday, March 14, 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 location(s) 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

Short Beach in Stratford may also need some monitoring, as may Sasco Hill Beach in Fairfield. 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. Information on additional shorebirds, terns, long-legged waders, disturbances, usage of the beach, and more is always great, including negative data (if you did not record any of our target species). 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 would like to be paired up initially with master monitors who have past experience or if you are a master monitor willing to help please let us know if you have not already. Remember to check out the right-hand column of this blog for helpful documents and 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 in April. Thank you all! We could not accomplish any of this without our tremendous volunteers.