A COASTAL FRESHWATER OASIS

     I've been watching a narrow, half-mile strip of phragmites, tall grass and red juniper trees on a shoreline on developed Long Beach Island, along Barnegat Bay in New Jersey from mid-December, 2021 to the middle of January, 2022 through a live camera and our home computer screen.  While watching, I discovered that remnant strip of vegetation represents much of New Jersey's developed coastline.  And I noticed a variety of adaptable birds come to a little, freshwater stream in this bit of bay shoreline to drink fresh water.  That little oasis is an interesting place to see, including in winter, what birds daily come to the fresh water amid shoreline development.  Those birds use every niche from the bay to the red junipers.

     The New Jersey shoreline is a series of narrow, sandy islands that form between the Atlantic Ocean and the salt marshes and channels between those islands and the mainland.  Those long, lean islands protect the salt marshes from ocean waves.  

     The attractive Atlantic brant geese are the most common wintering species that regularly comes to that freshwater oasis to drink of it.  Groups of them come to and leave that oasis on Long Beach Island, all day, most every winter day.  Up to 300 brant come there each day.  It's exciting to see so many of them, close-up (by the camera), milling about and drinking from that stream.  And it's interesting to see flocks of them bobbing on the bay between eating and drinking forays.

     Brant nest on parts of the Arctic tundra, and winter in salt marshes, especially in New Jersey.  In winter, they feed on aquatic plants, grasses and other vegetation.

     Up to 20 hardy, dark black ducks daily populate this oasis in winter.  Many black ducks winter in salt marshes along the Atlantic Coast where they ingest a variety of vegetation. 

     Wintering, loose groups of bufflehead ducks bounce among the wavelets of Barnegat Bay and dive under its surface to shovel up aquatic vegetation from the bottom.  Male buffleheads have striking black and white feather patterns, while their mates are a uniform dark-gray, which camouflages them.

     A couple dozen Canada geese and a handful of mallard ducks also regularly frequent this little stream to drink.  But those two species are almost everywhere, and not particularly exciting to see on Jersey's barrier islands.

     Wintering ring-billed gulls and American crows, both eaters of almost everything, fly over Barnegat Bay and Long Beach Island in search of food.  Both species also drink from the stream.

     Occasionally, a stately great blue heron carefully stalks through the stream and the bay coastline in its search for fish to consume.  And between fishing forays, the heron stands among the tall grasses and phragmites to rest and digest in relative peace.  

     Sometimes I see one or a few handsome killdeer plovers running and stopping across the sand and gravel where the stream enters the bay.  Those shorebirds are looking for invertebrates to ingest.

     Occasionally, I saw yellow-rumped warblers eating the tiny, pale-blue cones of the red junipers on the island.  These wintering warblers look like sparrows, except for their thin bills and patches of yellow on their rumps and flanks.     

     All these species adapted to the remnant natural parts of Jersey's developed barrier islands along the Atlantic Ocean coastline.  And every remnant niche supports at least one species of wildlife.  And that wildlife fits in for their survival and our entertainment and inspiration.  

      

     

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