SUMMER AT THE WETLANDS INSTITUTE

     The Wetlands Institute is six thousand acres of salt marshes and tidal channels near Stone Harbor, New Jersey.  I've been to those wetlands in years past, but during the summer of 2020, I have viewed them through the Institute's live cameras and our computer screen at home, seeing many of the same birds I saw when I was there in person.  
     The protected salt marshes and tidal channels at the Wetlands Institute represent salt marshes and channels along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of North America.  Barrier islands of beaches protect those marshes and backwaters from pounding ocean waves, making them valuable to a variety of wildlife, from fish to fiddler crabs and egrets.
     Every summer, a large colony of laughing gulls nests among tall grasses on the marshes of the Wetlands Institute.  To me, the boisterous and black-headed laughing gulls are the icons of  summer North Atlantic shorelines.  They are the most noticeable of birds in the salt marshes, and daily seen feeding on most anything edible, both natural and human-made, on boardwalks, beaches, harbors and other backwaters, and in the marshes.  Their young are on the wing and foraging by mid July.
     A few Wetlands Institute live cameras are focused on an osprey nest of grasses on a human-made platform in the middle of the salt marsh.  Three young were being raised at the time of this writing in mid-July of 2020.  People watching that nest by live cameras see the parents incubating the eggs, the mother  protecting the young from predators and the hot sun, and, usually, the mother feeding bits of fish to the young by tearing those pieces off the fish carcasses with her sharp beak.  Her mate brings most of the fish to the nest, however.
     Willets, which are a kind of sandpiper, and permanent resident clapper rails also nest among the tall grasses of salt marshes, including at the Wetlands Institute.  The willets' bold, black and white wing patterns are noticed when they fly over the marsh loudly calling "pill-willet, pill-willet .......".  These well-camouflaged birds, and their offspring, feed mostly on invertebrates among tall grasses in salt marshes.
      Mostly hiding among the grasses, rails are mostly noticed when the tide is out and those birds, and their black-fuzzed young, are on the bare flats to feed on invertebrates in the mud and shallow water.  I can identify rails by their shapes and the way they move.
     A few kinds of birds, including the stately great egrets, the lovely snowy egrets, stream-lined common terns and interesting black skimmers are "seen" by live cameras as those birds patrol the waters of the Wetlands Institute's salt marshes for small fish.  All these birds catch fish in different ways, for which they are built.  Form follows function.  Egrets wade on long legs in the shallows and strike out with their lengthy necks and beaks to snare prey.  Terns hover in the air and dive bill-first into the water to catch finny victims in their beaks.  And skimmers skim their longer lower mandibles through the waters' surfaces as they fly just above the water.  When skimmers feel a fish bump their lower mandible, they snap their bills shut to seize that scaly prey.  
     When I was about twelve years old, I liked to sit by a harbor during summer evenings in Margate City, New Jersey and watch skimmers skim the water.  Back and forth a few of them went before the setting sun and over the sky-reflecting water, their lower mandibles making an ever-widening crease in the water as they flew.     
     I also see, by live cameras, purple martins and red-winged blackbirds in the salt marshes of the Wetlands Institute.  The martins nest in an apartment bird house near the Institute's headquarters and eat flying insects they catch on the wing, while red-wings rear young among the taller grasses and consume invertebrates.
     These are the majority of birds I've seen through the Wetlands Institute's live cameras.  And I know there are other intriguing critters there I didn't see by cameras, including seaside and saltmarsh sparrows, fiddler crabs, horseshoe crabs and diamond-backed terrapins.  The salt marsh and waters of the Wetlands Institute are interesting and inspiring to visit.  And they represent Atlantic Coast salt marshes everywhere in North America.  

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