Hi everyone, it’s me, Bri! The field season has come to an end. From May to June, the Marshes for Tomorrow team worked diligently in the field to collect as much bird data as possible. This involved a variety of surveys, discussed in previous blog posts (hyperlink previous posts), including point counts, callback surveys, mist-netting and banding, nest searching, and the deployment of autonomous recording units (ARUs). Next, we will analyze the data collected to understand what kinds of birds are using the marsh and their breeding status. For this blog, I want to highlight some of the things we saw this summer.
Another beautiful sunrise out in the marsh!
We documented great diversity in the marsh! In total, we saw 35 species across all three monitoring sites, including Willets, Laughing Gulls, Great Blue Herons, Clapper Rails, Red-winged Blackbirds, Seaside Sparrows, and our target species, Saltmarsh Sparrows! But we didn’t just see birds in the marsh. During one of our boat trips, we had the opportunity to see a pod of dolphins fishing offshore near one of the sites. It was an amazing experience! Along with the dolphins, we also saw a variety of turtle species, like the Diamondback Terrapin and Painted Turtle. During one of our very early mornings, it was still dark out and we witnessed a large amount of fireflies in the marsh. These experiences underscored the beauty of the salt marshes of the Lower Eastern Shore.
A Seaside Sparrow nest found at one of the properties we monitored.
When it came to mist-netting and banding, we caught quite a few birds. Across our field sites, we caught 14 Saltmarsh Sparrow and 25 Seaside Sparrow. We also confirmed breeding of other species by finding their nests, including nests for Virginia Rails, Clapper Rails, Red-winged Blackbirds, and Seaside Sparrows. While we did not find Saltmarsh Sparrow nests, our trapping efforts helped confirm that Saltmarsh Sparrow were breeding in at least one of our three sites. To our knowledge, this was not previously documented!
It was a wonderful field season overall, and I had a great time getting to experience the marsh with the team. I want to take this time to thank our partners who worked with us in the field during this summer. Specifically, a big thank you to the SHARP team at the University of Delaware, USFWS staff, and the Besterman Lab at Towson University. This experience only emphasized the importance of partnerships.
Some of our wonderful team including members from our partners with USFWS and SHARP!
While it is sad to say goodbye to the marsh for now, I hope you all enjoyed learning more about it and the techniques we employed to gather our data in the field. It has been a pleasure writing about our field work and I am excited for the future of the Marshes for Tomorrow project. Until next year, thanks again for reading and remember to go outside and appreciate your local marsh!
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