Curious Coast: Birds vanish from Port Orange’s “Bird Island”

By Dinah Voyles Pulver 

Posted Nov 25, 2018 at 12:01 AM Updated Nov 27, 2018 at 6:01 PM

In a mystery that has residents and scientists stumped, the birds that give Seabird Island in Port Orange its name have left their island home.

Local residents say huge flocks of brown pelicans, herons and egrets that normally cluster on an island known as “Bird Island” just south of the Dunlawton Avenue Bridge over the Halifax River suddenly stopped doing so in October.

Bill and Irene Beck noticed the birds were no longer on the island more than a month ago, said Irene Beck. “My husband basically grew up here and in his lifetime there have been three bridges built and that never seemed to scare the birds away,” she said.

But while boating past the island at least four times in recent weeks, they were shocked to find no birds. So, she reached out to Curious Coast, The News-Journal’s ongoing series where readers reach out with their questions about the community.

“Is it global warming? Is it construction? Who knows?” Beck said. “It’s a mystery to us, and to those who have been here for a while. What happened to our birds?

Continued  

Birds, nests, eggs stripped from rookery island in bay

Posted: Friday, May 3, 2013 12:03 pm | Updated: 12:11 pm, Fri May 3, 2013. 

By Charles Steward 

During the past week one of the rookery islands in San Antonio Bay has been ravaged. Most of the nests, chicks, and birds are gone. 

“I’ve been watching this island since 1969,” said Captain Kevin Sims of Aransas Bay Birding Charters. “I’ve never seen the island where the birds have left like they have.” 

For Sims this island was also special because a rare white Great Blue Heron was at a nest with a chick, also white. Both of these rare birds are lost too. 

He recalled, “I went by the island, Monday April 22, in the morning and everything was okay. There were lots of chicks, nests, and eggs. There were a lot of reddish egrets setting on eggs.” 

Sims said, “I went by Thursday (April 25) and the island was stripped of nests, eggs and chicks. It is disappointing about the white chick. I wanted to see this bird grow up and see how it behaved.” 

Sims returned to the island Friday and it appeared someone had returned and stripped it even more. He added, “I went by there on Sunday and there were just a handful of spoonbills left.” 

Continued: http://www.rockportpilot.com/news/article_6b7d03c2-b413-11e2-92a3-001a4bcf887a.html

Where did 50,000 'lost geese' go?

Researchers fit satellite tags to unlock secrets of ‘lost' geese

February 2013. Researchers in Bulgaria have taken the largest ever catch of Endangered red-breasted geese and fitted satellite tracking devices in a bid to unlock one of the biggest mysteries of the natural world.

red-breasted goose (Wikipedia)

Just over ten years ago, more than 50,000 of the small, brightly coloured geese seemingly disappeared from their wintering grounds along the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine.

Relocated or exterminated?
Coordinated international counts have not since recorded a significant increase, leaving scientists speculating whether the missing geese - half the world population - have relocated to unknown sites in southwest Asia or fallen foul of hunting, development and changes in farming.

Teams from the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) and the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds (BSPB) caught 91 red-breasted geese and fitted 11 tags to follow the birds' individual movements along their 6,000 km migration to breeding grounds in Arctic Russia.

But conservationists working to save the red-breasted goose are being realistic about the chances of rediscovering the ‘lost' population. The data gathered will also help conservationists work with farmers, planners and developers in Bulgaria.

Peter Cranswick, Head of Species Recovery at WWT, has been at the heart of the international effort to catch and tag the geese. He said:

50% of the world's population disappeared
"Almost overnight, we were unable to account for around half the world's red-breasted geese. The reasons are still unclear and we are tracking these individual birds to find out more.

"The data we get will be invaluable to our work with local communities in Bulgaria - the farmers, shooters and landowners - to work out how we support the remaining geese, while still meeting their needs. It is also possible that, as the climate has changed, some birds have started to winter further east. We hope our tagged birds will reveal as yet unknown sites, so we can assess their importance and - if necessary - ensure their protection."

The project ‘Safe Ground for Redbreasts' is funded the contribution of the LIFE financial instrument of the European Community.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/bulgaria-geese.html