Return to the Shore

We visited family in New Jersey for Memorial Day weekend. On May 28 Dave, BB (Baby Birder), and I spent the morning at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. It was a lovely morning with loads of shorebirds and seabirds. We observed 48 species and added 2 new birds to our life life: a Marbled Godwit and Bank Swallows. Here are some of the highlights:

Seabirds: Common Terns, Forster Terns, Least Terns, Gull-billed Terns, Black Skimmers, Great Black-backed Gulls, Herring Gulls, Ring-billed Gulls, Laughing Gulls, Double-crested Cormorants

Forster’s Tern (Image by Michelle Horowitz)
Black Skimmers (Image by David Horowitz)

Shorebirds: Marbled Godwit, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Ruddy Turnstones, Black-bellied Plover, American Oystercatchers, Willets, Dunlin, White-rumped Sandpipers, Short-billed Dowitchers

Ruddy Turnstone breeding adult (Image by Michelle Horowitz)

Other Highlights: A Clapper Rail running across the mudflats, 24 Osprey, Marsh Wrens, lots of Red-winged Blackbirds, a horseshoe crab, and many Diamondback Terrapins

Diamondback Terrapin (Image by David Horowitz)
Diamondback Terrapins basking in the Sun (Image by David Horowitz)

Author: BirdNation

I am an avid birder, teacher, and nature lover from New Jersey. I work as a naturalist and have a degree in Environmental Science with a concentration in Natural Resources and Conservation. My dream is to go birding in all 50 states.

2 thoughts on “Return to the Shore”

  1. Hi, my name is Dorothy Dowling and way back in June, 2015 I sent a picture I had taken on a Cape May beach (NJ) of a banded American Oyster Catcher (#38). I still have the photo and my sighting is listed in the AMOY database. Now I’m curious because from something I just read here it sounds like #38 might still be alive after all these years. Is that possible? How long do they live? I saw a line that indicated #38 was just seen in August of 2023 (this month) in Cape May. I am very curious as to whether or not it is the same bird. Can you help me out here? I am happy to send you the photo I took back in 2015.

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    1. Hi Dorothy! According to the AMOY, the oldest recorded oystercatcher was 17 and it’s very common for birds to live at least 10 years. I wrote about #38 in my post called “Old Friends” from May 28, 2019. The data in #38’s file at the time showed that it was around 8 years old when I wrote about them in 2019, so it would be at least 12 years old as of August 2023. So it’s definitely possible that it’s the same bird. Is the 3 in your picture underlined? If you check out that post I mentioned you can see the tags.

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