AAfCW 2018 Volunteer Update #14

This is the fourteenth regular weekly update by the Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds (AAfCW) for the 2018 season. Today's update includes reports of Piping Plover, American Oystercatcher, Least Tern and Common Tern from August 20 through 8:00am on August 27 with sightings of birds by volunteers and staff spanning the period.

Informational updates:

This is the final regular weekly update for the Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds for the 2018 season. If you visit your beach for monitoring through the end of the month we will certainly take your data and information as always. If for some reason you have not submitted all of your monitoring trips to us this year please do so as soon as possible. You are also more than welcome to continue birding and recording shorebirds, terns, and long-legged waders in Connecticut year-round, and if you would be so kind as to share your eBird checklists of those target birds with us via the eBird email share function (ctwaterbirds@gmail.com) we would really appreciate it!

We thank you for your assistance in helping us achieve another very successful season. While we would have liked to see a few more birds attempt to nest, especially our terns, we did wonderfully with all the birds that did raise their young on our beaches thanks to you. We will be hosting a volunteer thank you party at Stratford Point in the next couple of months, and we will email all of you details in coming weeks. We will provide you with some preliminary numbers for how our focal species did this season later in the fall as well. We hope all of you will join us again in 2019!

Survey and monitoring updates:

Piping Plover
4 adults at Sandy/Morse Points on 8/22
1 adult at Sandy/Morse Points on 8/22

American Oystercatcher
1 pair, 2 fledglings at Lover's Island on 8/21
1 pair at Umbrella Island on 8/21
1 adult at Sandy/Morse Points on 8/22
1 pair at Quinnipeag Rocks on 8/23

Least Tern
6 adults at Sandy/Morse Points on 8/22
3 adults, 2 hatchlings, 3 fledglings at Bluff Point on 8/23

Common Tern
242 adults/juveniles at Sandy/Morse Points on 8/22
300 adults/juveniles at Sandy/Morse Points on 8/22
3 adults, 1 juvenile at Bluff Point on 8/23

This concludes update #14 through 8/27/18 as of 12:00 p.m.