Menunkatuck Audubon Society Annual Report 2013

Suzanne Botta Sullivan reports on the past year’s activities

I am pleased to report that 2013 was another outstanding year for Menunkatuck Audubon Society. With your financial support and the hard work of the Chapter Board members and many volunteers we have conducted a vast array of programs, field walks, and conservation studies, worked on habitat restoration, increased our partnerships, and much more. With great pride, we list here for your review the significant accomplishments achieved in 2013.

Conservation

The Hammonasset Beach State Park Purple Martin and Tree Swallow Project continued with careful monitoring of five purple martin houses with 60 compartments and 31 tree swallow boxes. Nesting attempts by European starlings and house sparrows are discouraged and as a result success rates for both the purple martin colonies and the tree swallows have flourished (143 purple martin fledged and 114 tree swallows fledged).

Grants from the Audubon Collaborative Grant ($1500) and the Connecticut Ornithological Association ($300) provided funds to help  purchase two solar powered sound systems to play recordings to attract purple martins and chimney swifts.

Four kestrel nest boxes were installed at the East River Preserve and the Dudley Preserve in Guilford. 

Our partnership with the Northeast Connecticut Kestrel Project continued with securing a $3500 grant from the Nuttall Ornithological Club’s Blake-Nuttall Fund. The grant will be used for geolocator deployment with American kestrels in an attempt to better understand the population movements of central Connecticut’s threatened falcon.

Menunkatuck expanded its role in New Haven by working with Audubon Connecticut, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Common Ground High School, and other organizations in the USFWS establishment of the New Haven Harbor Watershed Urban Wildlife Refuge Partnership, the second such refuge announced by USFWS. 

We partnered with the West Haven Watershed Restoration Committee in getting an Audubon IBA Small Matching Grant for $2500 for the Sandy Point Bird Sanctuary Enhancement Project. Non-native invasive plants were removed in the fall. Native species will be planted in spring.

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Your support of Menunkatuck Audubon Society helped us secure the following grants and matching grants for us and our partners in 2013.

Audubon Collaborative Grant -  $1500

Connecticut Ornithological Association Small Grant - $300

Nuttall Ornithological Club’s Blake-Nuttall Fund - $3500

Audubon IBA Small Matching Grant - $2500

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Citizen Science

Our partnership with the Project Limulus horseshoe crab tagging surveys had more than 27 volunteers conduct 16 surveys.

Menunkatuck members participated in Audubon Connecticut’s spring and fall bird migration surveys to identify critical stopover habitat.

Advocacy

Menunkatuck took the lead on an move to institute a ban on balloons in all state parks. Balloons are a serious problem for birds and other wildlife. Menunkatuck’s proposal to DEEP for banning balloons was sent to other Audubon Chapters in Connecticut as well as other environmental groups. Seven other organizations sent letters of support.

Education and Outreach

The Birdathon was held in May. Menunkatuck and The Audubon Shop participated together and more than 100 species were recorded. 

As part of the New Haven Harbor Watershed Urban Wildlife Refuge Partnership, Menunkatuck worked with local high school students in migratory bird surveys and in two invertebrate surveys.

We participated in the Yale Peabody Museum’s Earth Day program, the New Haven Migration Festival, and in the Hammonasset Festival.

General Public Meeting

Public programs are held monthly on the second Wednesday of each month (except July and August). Last year the meetings featured a variety of topics and speakers, including programs on birding in South Africa, snakes of Connecticut, a live porcupine, and landscaping with native plants. Our meetings are free and open to the public.

Field Programs

This year Menunkatuck provided four exciting field programs, including a woodcock search at the Guilford Salt Meadows Sanctuary, a spring trip to Central Park and the New York Historical Society’s Audubon watercolors exhibition in New York, and a fall walk at Lake Saltonstall.

Newsletter 

The newsletter is printed six times per year. In addition to informing our members and friends about Menunkatuck’s activities and events we include Cindi Kobak’s “Bio-bits” natural history essays. The Newsletter also includes tips on going green and information about upcoming events in our chapter area. Citizen Science highlighted six opportunities for helping scientists with their research. The newsletter is also available online as a PDF. Getting your newsletter electronically saves Menunkatuck about $5.00 per member.

Web Site

Menunkatuck maintains a web site that features a blog, a photo gallery, and a variety of educational information and links. We are also on Facebook with frequent posts with photos, event notices, and links to bird and environmental articles on the Internet. 

Volunteers

Menunkatuck volunteers contributed more than 1200 man-hours to conservation, advocacy education, and outreach activities.

Conclusion

As you can see, Menunkatuck is a leader in environmental education, conservation, and advocacy. Please join the Menunkatuck Board in making 2014 an even better year. If you can become more involved please e-mail me at president@menunkatuck.org or speak to any Board member at any event.

~Suzanne Botta Sullivan
(From the January 2014 newsletter.)

Citizen Science: Marine Debris Tracker

Summer is here and millions of people worldwide will be heading to beaches and waterways for sun and fun. Will they find clean beaches and clear waterways?

With bottles, cans, abandoned or lost fishing gear and other marine debris washing up on our shores each year, the University of Georgia and NOAA have teamed up to create a new, innovative cell phone reporting mechanism to combat the marine debris problem. This high-tech tool, or app, tracks where marine debris is accumulating and gives anyone with a “smart phone” an opportunity to be a part of the solution.

The easy-to-use Marine Debris Tracker app can be downloaded free for use on iPhones and Android phones. The simple tool allows users to report the type of debris and its location through GPS features pre-installed on a cell phone. The data reported are posted at marinedebris.engr.uga.edu for viewing and downloading. The app also encourages users to recycle or properly dispose of the trash they find.

Jenna Jambeck, assistant professor for the Faculty of Engineering at UGA and one of the app’s developers, says the app is one way the initiative is trying to reach people and raise awareness of marine debris.

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Marine debris can kill or injure wildlife when animals ingest it or become entangled in it. The debris can also have an economic impact on the tourism industry and other coastal businesses by affecting the beauty and cleanliness of beaches and waterways. Jambeck and codeveloper Kyle Johnsen, her colleague from the Faculty of Engineering at UGA, hope that the Marine Debris Tracker tool will help officials make decisions about how to handle marine trash — from supplying extra trash cans to providing opportunities to recycle or dispose of abandoned or lost fishing line and other gear.

Marine Debris Tracker does not have to be used within 3G, wifi, or cell range. Since the majority of debris tracking might take place in remote areas or even on the water, you can log and track as many items as you want and store the data. Then you can upload them later once you are back in 3G/wifi/cell signal.

Marine Debris Tracker is designed exactly for beach cleanup data collection. Instead of the paper data card you would normally use to mark items you find, you simply open the app on your phone, choose items from the list as you find them and log them. The list of items you found will be sent to our database once you submit your data from that day. 

Marine Debris Tracker can be used for regular beach cleanups or just log any debris item you see when you casually visit the beach. If you feel it is safe, you can also pick it up and recycle or dispose of it properly. Do not try to pick up large items, dead animals or anything that you suspect to be hazardous. You can also follow some very general guidelines. Try to pick a beach location that you can monitor regularly (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly) at the same general time. Then walk the same area (both horizontally and vertically) each time using Marine Debris Tracker to log (and hopefully picking up using gloves and a trash bag) the debris items that you find. You might want to make note of any major storm events or any other noticeable factors (wind, etc.) that might be influencing the debris that day. You can keep track of your marine debris data over time and then examine trends, etc. These are good activities for students to conduct too.

(From the July 2013 newsletter.)

Balloons Kill

• More than twenty years ago Audubon magazine warned of the hazards of releasing helium balloons.
• In 1990 a Connecticut state law was enacted prohibiting the inten­tional release of ten or more helium balloons within a 24-hour period.
• Today, many people know of the dangers to wildlife that helium balloons cause and they cringe at the sight of even a single balloon, intentionally or accidentally, sailing upward into the sky.

And yet...

• High school graduations routinely distribute helium balloons for outdoor dis­plays to honor the graduating seniors.
• Children are encouraged to let loose helium balloons in celebration of a fundraising event for a worthy cause.
• A recent road race within our chapter area distributed well over 100 bal­loons on ribbons to participants to release simultaneously while town and state dignitaries looked on.

The Menunkatuck Audubon Society believes it is time to refresh the public's memory as to why that little law passed in 1990 is so important and why it needs to be enforced and obeyed.

Balloons kill wildlife. Whether intentionally released as a promotional event, or carelessly let loose from an outdoor celebration, or accidentally escaped from the grasp of a child, a helium balloon can travel very far in a short period of time. (One was documented to have traveled 150 miles in less than four hours after escaping from a realty office.) Eventually the balloon deflates and descends back to earth or sea and begins to wreak its havoc on nature.

Here's a quiz:

1. What does a deflated helium balloon look like in the ocean?

2. What is the favorite food of some species of endangered sea turtle?

If you answered 'jellyfish' to both those questions you now understand the problem.

Sadly, sea turtles, whales, seals, sea birds, and other marine creatures die ev­ery year from ingesting or becoming entangled in discarded plastics, including balloons. Plastics clog or fill the digestive tracts of these animals, causing them to starve to death.

On land a deflated balloon trailing a ribbon becomes a hazard to many species of wildlife, including osprey chicks. Notorious trash collectors, adult ospreys add balloons, fishing line, kite string, plastic bags, and other human garbage to their nest. The nest becomes a death trap for their young, who become hopelessly ensnared in our carelessly discarded trash.

Whether accidental or deliberate, balloon releases are a form of pol­lution that can easily be stopped if more people are made aware of the dangers they pose to wild­life. We ask everyone to help spread the word.

Read more about the threat posed by balloons and download balloon information posters at balloonsblow.org.