New Jersey Trip: Shorebird Capture (Red-Knots, Ruddy Turstone, and Sanderlings) May 31- June 2

Since our whimbrel left, Fletcher decided it was a good time to head north and help out Larry Niles with his shorebird capture on the New Jersey Shore near Reed's Beech. Many great shorebird biologists from all over the world come together each year in New Jersey to capture and band red-knots, sanderlings, and ruddy turnstones. It was a great experience to be a part of.

On the Lewes-Cape May Ferry on monday night, we picked up Wilson's storm petrel for the year; we saw about 8 total. Otherwise, birding was slow on the ferry.

The next day, we trapped over 270 shorebirds near Reed's Beach. The crew here uses canon nets (versus the rocket propelled nets we used for whimbrel trapping), and a long gound net that can be well hidden in the sand. The first area we set up did not attractmany shorebirds (our targets were sanderlings and ruddy turnstones), so we moved operations, and after awhile, Larry fired on a pile of birds. Since it was a wet shot (part of the net in the water), our task was to run to the net as fast as possible (a few hundred meters of a dash) and push the net and birds out of the water. This is probably the most exciting part of a capture, directly following one of the loudest "BANG"s you will ever hear. Needless to say the adrenaline is pumping. After pushing the net out of the water, we immediately started extracting the birds that were caught in the leading edge of the net. Most came out easy since the mesh size was quite large, but a few semi-palmated sandpipers took a few more seconds to extract. Most of the birds don't actually get caught in the net, but are "herded" into a big group in the middle where they can be scooped out from under the net. Birds were seperated out into boxes by species.

We had three banding crews set up, and my job was to supply all of them with birds as they banded them, and also to release the freshly banded birds. Many birds were hot and tired from the capture, but calmed down after we got them in the shade and processed. In the end when things died down, I was able to band about 20 sanderling.

sanderlings

The next day, we set up another net with the target of ruddy turnstones. Alex and Fletcher joined in some "twinkling" (the name given to the task of herding and walking birds towards traps by slowly walking near/at them), and pretty quickly Larry called the FIRE shot. Even though our target was ruddy turnstones, we got many sanderling in the shot and decided to band them. We also got five red-knots on this shot!

banding ruddy turnstones

Another highlight of the trip were the diamond-back terrapins and horseshoe crabs that were coming ashore to lay their eggs. 

diamond back terrapin coming ashore

horseshoe crab trying to come ashore