Dune Road under a lot of water

Twice in the past couple of days, I've been driving down Dune Road at high tide. These are the days of full-moon spring tides and the water comes right up to and over the road. With the high water level in the marshes, it was not surprising that only the long-legged egrets (mostly Great) and herons (mostly Black-crowned Night Herons) were the dominant birds along with the willets, grackles (mostly Common but with a few Boat-tailed) and Red-winged Blackbirds that line the way.

Hurricane Sandy brought overwash to a number of places, easy to spot by the fact that all the dune vegetation was cleared away. Many of these areas have been fenced off in the hope that Piping Plovers and Least Terns -- both of which like the open sand dunes -- would move in. I can't speak to the Piping Plover issue (these birds nest in isolated pairs) but the Least Terns, which form colonies that can be quite substantial, do not appear to have taken to the new territories in any numbers. Disappointing.

One area where the overwash appears to have created substantial sand bars on the bay side is just east of Tiana Beach. This spot has been a great place for Horseshoe Crab landings in the spring (at least before the crabbers devastated the populations) and was always attractive to shore birds. Even now, with the sandy shoreline still exposed even at high tide (and visible even from the road), it has turned out to be a good roosting area for water and shore birds during high water when other such areas are inundated.

The big attraction here was a flock of about a dozen Black Skimmers, all (as far as I could see) in adult plumage. Skimmers are the only birds whose lower beak is longer than its upper mandible, a feature that it uses when skimming in shallow water. One or two of the birds were actually performing this maneuver; the lower beak is trailed in the water and when it strikes something edible, the upper bill snaps down on it. The bright red bill, tipped in black, contrasts with the white face and underparts; the top of the head is covered with a black hood that extends across the back and wings. The total effect is quite exotic and even a little threatening. When the bird skims low it has to flap its wings so that they never descend lower than a horizontal plane (otherwise the wings would dip in the water) so the black-and-white of the upper and lower wings makes a kind of semaphore signal, part of the bird's almost mystic appeal. Skimmers used to nest on the edges of some of the nearby marsh islands. Perhaps they still do or will again.

Other birds noted on the sand bar included numbers of out-of-season shore birds: peep (probably Semipalmated Sandpipers), Sanderlings, a Ruddy Turnstone, a Black-bellied Plover and several rather plump medium-sized sandpipers with medium-length bills that I'm quite sure were Red Knots in non-breeding plumage. Red Knots are famous for dining on Horseshoe Crab caviar so maybe there are still a few crabs coming in to this spot on the full moon to lay their eggs.

Eric Salzman