ADAPTABLE BIRDS OF BARNEGAT BAY

     I am always amazed how adaptable life on Earth is.  And adaptable birds wintering on and around Barnegat Bay, a large backwater off the Atlantic Ocean in coastal New Jersey, demonstrate that.

     Barnegat Bay is bordered on one side by the Jersey mainland and on the other by Long Beach Island, a barrier island between the ocean and the bay.  A long, thin, remnant saltwater marsh of phragmites and tall grasses along the bay on Long Beach Island helps attract wintering birds to the bay area.  And I see those birds by a live camera mounted on an osprey nest near Bayview Road on Long Beach Island, and our computer screen.  

    Again, I am amazed how many creatures live in such a tiny habitat as that pitiful saltwater marsh, surrounded by the works of people.  Long Beach Island is almost completely covered by houses and other types of buildings.  Little of the original island is left for wildlife.  

     On our computer screen, almost daily in winter, I see group after group of Atlantic brant geese skimming low over Barnegat Bay and landing at a freshwater stream flowing into the bay from that saltwater marsh.  The handsome brant gather there by the many score to drink fresh water.  And I've noticed they are the most abundant bird on Barnegat Bay through each winter. 

     Atlantic brant raise goslings on the high Arctic tundra, but winter along the Atlantic Coast of eastern North America.  In winter they consume aquatic vegetation and land plants, including the green shoots of winter rye in fields. 

     I also see other kinds of beautiful waterfowl on the bay and in that little salt marsh edging the bay.  Most species are also attracted to that fresh water stream to drink its water.  I've seen up to a couple dozen majestic Canada geese, four mute swans, up to twenty black ducks, several mallard ducks, and a few each of pintail ducks, green-winged teal ducks and gadwall ducks.  I don't see all these geese, swans and ducks at once, however.  They all ingest plants in the shallows, and on land. 

     I also see a handful of intriguing diving ducks in the deeper water of the bay, including several buffleheads almost daily, and a few each of lesser scaups and red-breasted mergansers occasionally.  The scaup and buffleheads dive under water from the surface to eat molluscs, crustaceans and aquatic vegetation.  The mergansers dive to catch small fish in their serrated beaks.   

     Herring, great black-backed and ring-billed gulls also winter on Barnegat Bay and its surroundings.  All these gulls are devout scavengers of anything edible, but they also catch and eat small fish alive.  These icons of big waters are attractive flying over the bay, or resting on its ice and shores.

     I've noticed a few kinds of the stately heron family around Barnegat Bay, at least for a short time this winter.  Two great egrets searched for small fish in the marsh along the bay for a few days in November, 2023.  An American bittern searched the stream in the salt marsh for more than a week.  And a great blue heron stalked the waters in the marsh all winter.  

     I saw all those long-legged, wading birds were successful in catching small fish from the saltmarsh stream.  I witnessed the slow stalk, the lightning-quick lunge of the long necks and the wriggling fish in the birds' bills before they swallowed them.   

     I've spotted a couple kinds of wintering sandpipers along the edge of the bay, especially when the tide is out, broadening the mud flats and gravel bars where those hardy, interesting birds seek invertebrates.  A few dunlin at a time wander over the mud in search of invertebrates, which they pull from the mud with their beaks.  And there are a few sanderlings that poke among the fine gravel after invertebrates to ingest.  Obviously, these two types of sandpipers don't compete much for food.   

     That pathetic, little marsh along Barnegat Bay, and the bay itself, show how adaptable certain birds are to live among the works of people.  If a habitat is right, even a remnant one in the midst of humans' development, adaptable critters will be in it.      

           

 

         

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