Good morning! Here are some points to remember as we enter monitoring season...
1) New monitor training at Sandy/Morse Points at 10:00am-12:00pm on 4/9 will not require a parking pass. CT DEEP will take care of parking with the City of West Haven for that morning for all. We will meet in the parking lot. The beach is located at the end of 1st Ave./Beach St. in West Haven. If you visit West Haven alone to monitor, you will need the free City-provided parking pass which will be mailed out in April unless you are a West Haven resident with a sticker or you pay to park on your own. To monitor in West Haven as a non-resident, please submit your mailing address, license plate, and vehicle information to ctwaterbirds@gmail.com.
2) If you have not already, you can pick up badges, lanyards, and brochures at one of these locations (or at new monitoring training on 4/9):
- Stratford Point – 1207 Prospect Drive, Stratford - Tues-Fri, 9a-5p
- Milford Point – 1 Milford Point Road, Milford - Tues-Fri, 9a-4p, Sat 10a-3:30p, Sun 12p-4p
- Roger Tory Peterson Estuary Center - 100 Lyme St., Old Lyme - Tues-Sat, 8-4pm, but flexible
Please note the change that Stratford Point will not be open on Mondays in April.
3) All who are monitoring need to have signed up officially, attended or reviewed training in full, have submitted a CT DEEP waiver form, and received a badge/lanyard to use when in the field. This includes anyone who may be accompanying you at the beach. Planned trips with others for the purposes of monitoring should have all individuals signed up through the aforementioned process.
4) Please submit your desired beaches and schedules as soon as you can to ctwaterbirds@gmail.com. It is still rather cold some days, and our birds are still finding their way back to Connecticut. Some of the major beaches now have numbers of Piping Plovers and American Oystercatchers as they begin to pair off, establish territory, and start the breeding season. Least and Common Terns typically return to Connecticut right about May 1, so do not expect to see them for weeks still. Fencing will be erected soon, and your monitoring trips can begin once you have completed all parts of the process and are set at your beach.
5) Please remember to use our blog when you have questions, want to enter your monitoring data, need to see references on shorebird identification, report a banded individual, and so forth. The volunteer monitoring packet for 2022 is here as well. The right-hand column has links to the Online Data Submission Form, monitor training on YouTube to review, and more.
6) When you do begin monitoring, you may have some trips to the beach without seeing any of our focal species. Please enter this negative data into the Online Data Submission Form as you would a trip with sightings of our birds. It is vital to know you still visited the beach and observed no focal species.
More to come soon - we are making steady progress, and thank you everyone for your help!
Best,
Scott Kruitbosch
AAfCW Volunteer Coordinator
