The Atlantic Flyway

Corrie Folsom-O’Keefe, Audubon Connecticut’s IBA Coordinator, reports on wintering shorebirds in the Bahamas

In Connecticut, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began monitoring Piping Plovers in 1986 when the species first received protection under the Endangered Species Act. The CT DEEP Wildlife Division added their expertise with the passing of the Connecticut Endangered Species Act in 1989. The Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds joined the USFWS and the Wildlife Division and with the help of an amazing group of volunteers have been stewarding Piping Plovers and other beach-nesting birds along the Connecticut shoreline since 2012. Working together, staff, field technicians, and volunteers exclose nests, protecting them from predators; put up string fencing to reduce disturbance in nesting areas; and engage beachgoers and municipalities about beach-nesting species, the threats they face, and how to help. Through these efforts, the number of pairs of Piping Plover nesting in the state has slowly increased.

Protecting Piping Plover on their nesting grounds is very important to species recovery, but we also need to think about the species and the habitat it uses during migration and over the winter. Until very recently little was known about the locations used by Piping Plover in winter. The 2006 discovery of 400 Piping Plovers in the Bahamas by Audubon and the Bahamas National Trust triggered a closer look at the nation’s 700 islands and roughly 2,000 cays. During a 2011 census, researchers found over 1,000 Piping Plovers--perhaps 20% of the entire Atlantic Coast population--concentrated in one small cluster of Bahamian islands--Andros Island, the Joulter Cays (now a globally Important Bird Area), and the Berry Islands. The census filled in a huge gap in our understanding of these engaging and imperiled birds.

In January I joined National Audubon Society staff from along the Atlantic Flyway pitching in to locate additional sites important to Piping Plover and other shorebirds in the Bahamas. Traveling by flat bottom skiffs and on foot we inventoried shorebirds and other waterbirds on mudflats and along the edges of mangrove islands. 

Over the course of the five days we spend in East Grand Bahama, we were able to locate 526 Short-billed Dowitcher (possibly enough to qualify the area as a continentally Important Bird Area), 276 Least Sandpipers, 148 Semipalmated Plover, 50 Sanderling, approximately 75 Black-bellied Plover, 20 Ruddy Turnstone, 12 American Oystercatchers, between 7-14 Piping Plover, and 6 Wilson’s Plover.

The data not only increases our knowledge of shorebird wintering habitat but also will be used by the Bahamas National Trust to determine whether the area should be designated as a National Park. 

Surveying for shorebirds on their wintering grounds in East Grand Bahama was an awesome opportunity and I look forward to sharing my stories while on the beaches of Connecticut this summer.

(A longer version of this report is at goo.gl/1qnkfA.)

(Corrie will be at the March public meeting recruiting volunteers to assist with summer shorebird monitoring and spread the word about the Forest Bird Habitat Assessments that Audubon will be offering for landowners.)

(From the March, 2014 newsletter.)