LONG BEACH WETLANDS

     I like to experience remnant habitats amid human activities to know what adaptable, wild plants and animals live in them among our activities.  An interesting, remnant habitat I watched from mid-April to mid-May of this year is a long, narrow strip of grassy salt marsh along part of the western shore of fully developed Long Beach Island, a long, thin, New Jersey barrier island, between Barnegat Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.  I was able to see that slender salt marsh via a live camera focused on an osprey nest and our home computer screen.  

     April and May are months of north-bound migrations for many kinds of bird species, including some of them noticed at the little salt marsh on Long Beach Island.  Some individuals of certain species stayed in that marsh to raise young.  I came to realize that this is a good wildlife habitat, for its size, in the midst of human activities, including homes, businesses and vehicle traffic on a nearby road.  And I know there are many similar-sized wetlands, in the midst of human activities, along the Atlantic Coast in the United States.  All these tiny, remnant salt marshes together create resting areas, banquet tables, and homes for much coastal wildlife.

     Several kinds of wild birds I noticed in the tiny salt marsh along Barnegat Bay are fish-eaters, including green, little blue, tri-colored and black-crowned night herons, and great and snowy egrets.  But, probably, the green heron is the only species that will nest in trees near this little salt marsh.  The other kinds will keep moving on.

     Herons and egrets stalk fish, crayfish, frogs, tadpoles and other aquatic creatures by walking cautiously on long legs through shallows and carefully watching for prey.  When victims are spotted, each heron or egret watches for the right time to snap forward, with lightning speed, its neck to grab the victim in its long bill.

     Other catchers of fish I saw at this remnant wetland on Long Beach Island includes skimmers, ospreys, common terns and laughing gulls.  Each of these coastal species snares fish in its own way, which made it a distinct species.  Skimmers cruise in flight just above the water surface with their long lower mandible cutting through the water.  When a skimmer feels a small fish bump its lower mandible, it snaps its beak shut to capture that fish.

     Ospreys are hawks that catch larger fish, including the flounder and striped bass I saw them eating through the live camera.  Ospreys circle high, and hover into the wind, over large bodies of water as they watch for prey near the surface.  When a victim is spotted, they dive to the water, plunge into it, and grab the fish with their eight long, sharp talons.

     Common terns catch small fish by hovering into the wind and diving head-first into the water to grab their prey in their bills.  Terns don't compete with ospreys because they can only seize small fish.  And they don't compete with herons because they snare fish from deep water where herons don't go.

     Laughing gulls, the black-headed, summer icons of the Atlantic shoreline, pick little fish from the surfaces of larger waters, and scavenge dead fish, and anything else edible.  Interestingly, I watched laughing gulls scavenging bits of fish from osprey meals, via the live camera on Long Beach Island.

     Beautiful red-winged blackbirds and boat-tailed grackles eat invertebrates in this tiny salt marsh.  Female red-wings also place their grassy nurseries among the tall stems of beautifully-plumed phragmites in the marsh.

     Several kinds of migrating shorebirds, including semi-palmated plovers, ruddy turnstones, least sandpipers, semi-palmated sandpipers, dunlin and short-billed dowitchers, temporarily rested, and dined on invertebrates, on the little beaches of Barnegat Bay.  Each bird might have stayed there a couple of days to fatten up, and then migrated farther north to the Arctic tundra to raise young.  

     I also spotted other kinds of birds, including a few each of oystercatchers, sora rails, glossy ibis and willets, on this little wetland.  Oystercatchers are noted to have long, laterally-thin, red bills they use to pry open clams, oysters and other types of mollucs to eat the meat inside.  Ibis poke their long, decurved beaks into mud to pull out worms and other invertebrates.  Soras eat invertebrates from plants and soil in marshes and willets are another kind of sandpiper that feeds much like the soras.  Soras and willets might raise offspring in this wetland on Long Beach Island.  

     I also saw a raccoon and river otter in this wetland.  These are mammals with an attraction to water to get food.

     I spent a month happily watching for wildlife in this salt marsh.  And I saw lots of it.  However small, these wetlands along the seacoast are big in coastal life.  Every bit of wild habitat, everywhere, is valuable to beautiful, wonderful and interesting wild plants and animals that make our lives much more rich and enjoyable.      

            

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