very hot day with weird flotsam and predator exclosure

May 25, 2018
Coffee of the Day: Tanzania Peaberry
Bird of the Day: least tern air defense command in action
Weird Wrack Item of the Week: strange agglomeration of flotsam
Invisi-bird Status: Refuge: 43 pairs, 26 nests. Sandy Point: 9 pairs, 2 nests. Town Beach: 6 pairs, 2 nests. Number actually seen by me: 2 on active nest.

Looking South

The extremely hot weather brought lots of people to the beach. The slope of the beach changes constantly and today's beach had a steep drop off between the dry sand and the wet sand area as the tide went out. People walking along the water line can't necessarily see where the boundary is nor can people up on the dry area see everything that's happening below the drop off. I got quite a workout going back and forth to the water line intercepting walkers about to trespass into the closed area and rounding up children who were dashing into the closed area and/or pulling up all the sticks we were using to mark the boundary. It's always tough when the tide is out but the combination of the steep slope and unruly children made it exhausting.

Great Black Back

Tons of visitors means tons of questions, most of which were the usual ones about how the plovers are doing, is the tide coming in or going out, when will the beach re-open,  where are the striped bass, etc.  However, today's most common question was about a mass of orange buoys with stuff tangled up in the lines bobbing in the waves close to shore. People were freaking out thinking it was either a swimmer in distress or a dead body about to wash up onshore. I lost count of how many people asked me if what they were looking at was a person in distress and whether I could call for help. With binoculars I could tell it was just a tangled mass of flotsam. I had to keep explaining that. I remembered to tell my relief about it. He mentioned that on his last shift he'd gotten a lot of questions about what the predator exclosure was.

Predator Exclosure -- You can sort of see the plover on the nest

Biological staff hasn't been regularly installing predator exclosures because crows had learned that that's where the plovers are. They have exclosed some nests depending on location and other circumstances. Anyway, there is now an exclosure around the nest nearest the north boundary. Only one visitor asked me about it.

The least tern air defense command went into action several times to chase away a great black back, a herring gull, a crow, and just about anything that moved. There aren't any least tern nests at this end so I'm not sure what they were defending.