WildLife Guards Planting & Removing
The Bridgeport WildLife Guards do even more than educate beachgoers about the wildlife around us or conduct avian surveys on the shore as they, like the Project Wild America Youth Ambassadors, get hands-on with our local habitats. The Guards recently came to Stratford Point for the day in order to help enhance and maintain the increasingly spectacular site as upland habitats are completely overhauled with a focus on benefiting migratory songbirds and various pollinator species. They planted everything from butterfly weed to serviceberry while removing non-native invasive species such as...
Read MoreTalkin’ Trash
Plastics are ubiquitous in our daily lives due to their many desirable attributes; they’re lightweight, durable, and can be shaped into so many different items! Unfortunately, these same qualities have also led to their widespread distribution and persistence in our environment. Almost half of the more than three hundred million tons* of plastic that are produced each year are unaccounted for; in other words, they aren’t making it to recycling facilities or landfills. The majority of the plastic trash that originates on land – those soda bottles, shopping bags, drinking...
Read MoreKayaking Dogs
This scene is one that has personally appalled me all spring and summer long as hundreds of people have been seen by our staff and volunteers kayaking offshore with their dogs in this apparently growing fad. To each their own, though I do wish more safety precautions were taken here…life jackets are for wearing, you know, and they do no good when you’re already in the water or injured. Regardless, so many people and dogs in kayaks among the sizable and fast boats in Long Island Sound seem to enjoy landing on various beaches and offshore islands in order to stretch their legs, run...
Read MoreLeast Tern
This summer has been a “late” one for some of our waterbirds with species like the Piping Plover still nesting into July, a full three months after some of their counterparts had started a new family. Our work in the Audubon Alliance for Coastal Waterbirds focuses primarily on four species – those Piping Plovers, the American Oystercatcher, plus Common and Least Terns. Both of the terns arrive back in Connecticut right around May 1 each spring. They check out the menus, get the lay of the land and see what has changed over the beach-shaping winter months, push through the...
Read MoreOutrageously Outstanding Outreach
The Bridgeport WildLife Guards are rolling along in the 2016 season, and last week I stopped in to visit them for a while on a couple of days. We went for a walk to see some Piping Plovers and Least Terns along their own Pleasure Beach and the connected Long Beach in Stratford, the two parts of the mile-long barrier beach. While Pleasure Beach’s Piping Plover has fledged we still sometimes find a bird or two foraging or flying by. No Least Terns nested there in 2016, but they are currently nesting in nearby areas of Long Beach. Those birds forage all over the general area so visitors...
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