Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge and Audubon Louisiana are teaming up on a Beach Nesting Survey and they are looking for volunteers to help with the study.
The research staff is looking for anyone with spare time to walk beaches with them, looking for various shorebirds. Any volunteer should be able bodied enough to walk between 3-6 miles a day. Past experience with identifying birds helps, but the staff is willing to train anyone that can perform observations for the project.
The Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge has reasonably high densities Wilson’s Plovers along its shoreline, and this site is relatively free of human disturbance. Understanding nesting success in this “natural” environment (without human or cattle disturbance pressures) would serve as a useful control site for interpreting nesting success at other sites in southwestern Louisiana where Audubon Louisiana will be working in 2016.
Project activities would include:
Anyone interested in volunteering, contact the Rockefeller Office: 337-491-2593 or (412) 997-3017.
The research staff is looking for anyone with spare time to walk beaches with them, looking for various shorebirds. Any volunteer should be able bodied enough to walk between 3-6 miles a day. Past experience with identifying birds helps, but the staff is willing to train anyone that can perform observations for the project.
The Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge has reasonably high densities Wilson’s Plovers along its shoreline, and this site is relatively free of human disturbance. Understanding nesting success in this “natural” environment (without human or cattle disturbance pressures) would serve as a useful control site for interpreting nesting success at other sites in southwestern Louisiana where Audubon Louisiana will be working in 2016.
Project activities would include:
- Locating and marking nests with a GPS and small wooden popsicle sticks. Nests will be revisited every 2-5 days so that we can track their fate (success vs failure), and causes of failure.
- We will capture and band adult and nestling Least Terns and Wilson’s Plovers to assess their survivorship, as well as for evaluating within- and between-year movements.
- Visiting most beaches along Cameron Parish looking for birds, keeping counts: Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, Rutherford Beach, Holly Beach, and Broussard Beach.
- Identifying birds from distances with binoculars or scopes.
Anyone interested in volunteering, contact the Rockefeller Office: 337-491-2593 or (412) 997-3017.
RSS Feed
