Shorebirds Blog

How many birds in this picture: take two!

2009-07-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

In April I posted this picture of four of our shorebirds camouflaged in their winter plumage. From top to bottom are a piping plover, semipalmated plover, sanderling and dunlin. Most of you could only find two or three of them, but look closely and there are four.

The birds are all currently in their summer breeding plumage and far less camouflaged. Now how many can you see? Click on the photo to enlarge. (answer below)

(There are six. From lower left to upper right are a semipalmated plover, two sandlerings, a dunlin, a common tern and a piping plover. The dunlin and sanderlings go through the most dramatic plumage changes. )

-Kate

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Mealworms, waxworms and crickets, Oh My!

2009-06-08T06:41:00.000-07:00

What do shorebirds eat? In the wild they rely heavily on bugs and crustaceans they find on the beach, mainly in the wrack, or seaweed, that washes up and is found along the high tide line. In our exhibit, however, it would be a lot of work to constantly haul 50 pounds of wrack into the everyday and we might not know how much the birds are eating.

The public often thinks that we let the birds forage around in the exhibit for their food, and they're partly right. Carefully hidden behind rocks, logs and dunes are dishes for the birds to forage in. We load them up twice a day with a prepared diet called Flamingo Fare (flamingos also eat bugs and crustaceans so it's a great food for shorebirds too) and "live foods" like mealworms. Notice the carrots the mealworms are eating on the left. By "gut loading" our insects first we can assure the birds are getting even more nutrition.

Wax worms are their favorite. These moth larvae have the highest fat content of anything we serve them, I like to think of it as the ice cream of the bug world. No wonder these little inch-long bugs are what they pick out of their dishes first!

We also release a jar of crickets into the exhibit a few times a day and then you can really see the birds forage! Check out the video of sanderlings foraging on our first blog post.

Other food items we might offer are blackworms, trout worms, brine shrimp, fish eggs, copepods and maggots. Yes, maggots! Bon appetite!

-Kate

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Meet Our Shorebird Collection: Dunlin

2009-05-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

Meet our dunlin. She was found along the Cape Cod Canal in 2003 with a fractured left wing. Vets at the Cape Wildlife Center rehabilitated her before she found a permanent home in our exhibit. She can fly a little but not well enough to make her annual breeding migration from as far south as Texas all the way to northern Hudson Bay in Canada. This picture captures her in her winter plumage, check back soon to see her in her beautiful breeding colors!

-Kate

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Meet our shorebird collection: common tern

2009-05-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

Our exhibit holds one common tern. We nicknamed her "Ike" before we found out she was a female. Ike was found as a chick in the summer of 2005 on a beach in southern Massachusetts. She was mistakenly though to be abandoned by her parents and was brought to a rehabilitation center before we eventually gave her a permanent home.

Tern parents often leave their chicks on the beach while they fish offshore. So if you ever see a tern chick without a parent watch it for a while and I bet you'll see an adult come back pretty soon with a beak full of fish. If you don't see a parent return then contact a local wildlife rehabber or your local animal control officer before you try to handle any wildlife.

Ike is perfectly healthy and can fly very well but we can't release her back into the wild. Common terns need their parents to show them how to migrate and forage for food. We sometimes see her catching live silversides out of the exhibit pool but she's not very good at it, she prefers to eat defrosted fish out of a bowl! You can see her in this picture looking at a silverside that contains her daily vitamin. Check back for video of her catching and eating worms!

-Kate

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Meet our shorebird collection: sanderlings

2009-05-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

Our exhibit holds two sanderlings, a male and a female. The male comes to us from a former exhibit and can fly very well. The female was found in the winter of 2007 on a beach on Long Island. Vets in New York discovered severe fractures of her radius and ulna and successfully rehabilitated her, although she can not fly. She therefore has found a permanent home in our exhibit. You can tell her apart from the male because of her slightly droopy right wing. They are seen here in their winter plumage. They're currently in the midst of their spring molt so check back in a few months to see them in their full breeding plumage.

-Kate

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A peek behind the scenes of the shorebird exhibit - the secret door!

2009-05-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I posted a riddle asked by many of our younger visitors: "how do you get out?" It does appear from the visitor side that when I'm in the shorebird exhibit I am in fact stuck.

I'm always reassuring visitors that my colleagues and I can get in and out quite easily through the "secret door." You can see our escape hatch on the left hand side of picture which was taken from inside the exhibit looking out. We do sometimes accidentally lock each other in the exhibit, so we do get stuck, but that's another story!

-Kate

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A peek behind the scenes of the shorebird exhibit

2009-04-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

The most frequently asked question I get from our younger visitors is "how do you get out?" It does appear from the visitor side that when I'm in the shorebird exhibit I am in fact stuck since there's no visible door.

Here you can see my two long-time volunteers, Becky and Julia, behind the mesh feeding the fish. So how do we get in and out? Check back Friday to learn the answer!

-Kate

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Our virginia rail the huntress

2009-04-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

Our Virginia rail is an excellent hunter. Check out this picture of her hunting fish in the pool from her perch on the breakwater. She can spend hours in this very same spot patiently waiting her chance to pounce on prey.

I often find empty snail shells on the beach, and I suspect the rail is the one that ate them. I once saw her try to eat a three-inch-wide green crab! She eventually backed down when he bared his claws at her.

-Kate

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Meet Our Shorebird Collection: Virginia Rail

2009-04-19T17:54:00.000-07:00

Our virginia rail is an escape artist! She comes to us from a rehabilitation facility in Wisconsin. Before she was put on the plane and sent to us she escaped from her carrier at an airport security check-point. A chase ensued, they called for backup, and she was eventually corralled back into her carrier.

Rails are generally secretive birds who live in marshes amongst the reeds. Our bird, however, likes to hang out right in the middle of the pool where everyone can see her!

-Kate

Spring has sprung in our shorebird exhibit!

2009-04-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

Our shorebird exhibit displays not only local bird species but local plants as well. In fact everything you see that's green was collected locally too! Just last week, as the sun has began to rise earlier and earlier, our smooth sumac tree started to leaf out.

Next time you visit also look

for other local species

such as seaside goldenrods...

...saltmarsh hay...

... and saltmarsh

cord grass.

-Kate

How many birds in this picture?

2009-04-15T05:30:00.000-07:00

How many birds can you see in this picture? (answer below)

(click to Enlarge)

Well camouflaged in their winter plumage are, from top to bottom: our piping plover, semipalmated plover, sanderling and dunlin. They're currently molting into their more colorful breeding plumage. Check back for a less camouflaged photo of them this summer!

-Kate

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Meet "pink" our five-year-old piping plover

2009-04-13T09:02:00.000-07:00

Our piping plover "Pink" hatched on New Seabury Beach in June of 2003. Shortly after he was observed with an injured wing. Once captured he was brought to a rehabilitation center on Cape Cod where two breaks were found in his left wing. It was determined he would never fly again.

Fortunately he has found a permanent home in our shorebird exhibit along with our other piping plover, May, and five other species of shorebirds. He will be six years old this summer!

-Kate

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Meet "May" our seven-year-old piping plover

2009-04-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

"May" hatched on June 7, 2001 on the beach at the Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May, New Jersey. We know the exact date because the nest he came from was being monitored by the Coast Guard.

By early July of that same summer he was observed with an injured wing, captured and brought to a nearby rehabilitation center. Multiple fractures were found in his left wing and he would never be able to fly again. Fortunately, in August of 2001 he found a permanent home here at the New England Aquarium. You can find him in our shorebird exhibit. He will be eight years old in a few months!

- Kate

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Meet Our Shorebird Collection: Piping Plover

2009-04-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

There are two piping plovers in our exhibit, both are males. Piping plovers are a threatened species in Massachusetts, yet our state supports 15 percent of the world's population with approximately 550 of the Atlantic coast's 1,800 nests. Both our birds were injured in the wild and cannot fly.

-Kate

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Welcome to our Shorebird Exhibit!

2009-04-01T11:59:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the New England Aquarium's shorebird exhibit "In on the Wind: shorebirds and the Boston Harbor Islands".

You're about to enter a unique exhibit featuring many different species of fish, plants, invertebrates and birds all living together. Peer through the mesh and you will see, and hear, six species of shorebirds. A common tern, two sanderlings, a dunlin, a virginia rail, two semipalmated plovers and two threatened piping plovers can be seen foraging for food amongst the rocks, marsh grass and driftwood and sometimes even in the saltwater pool itself! Press play and watch as our sanderlings catch crickets!

Look through the glass into the pool and you will see a large school of mummichogs, silversides and sheepshead minnows darting in and out of the kelp and irish moss. Bright orange finger sponges grow off the sandy bottom where four winter flounder hide with only their eyes peering out. Hermit crabs check out empty periwinkle shells looking for a housing upgrade. If you're lucky you'll see one of the elusive decorator crabs as he makes his way around the tank "decorating" himself by gluing sponges, pebbles and bits of seaweed to his shell. Play the video below and watch as the tataug comes out of the seaweed on the left, takes a bite out of the sponge, and returns to his lair.

Please come and visit again and you will have the chance to meet our birds one individual at a time, hear their mating calls, see where they nest and watch as they migrate through the harbor in the thousands! Thank you for visiting!

-Kate