Just after the crack of dawn, sleepy students pile into boats at a marina on Dauphin Island off Alabama’s coast. They’re headed on a 20-minute ride to Coffee Island, a small barrier island in the Mississippi Sound.
Leading the group is John Dindo, a senior marine scientist at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. Once on Coffee Island, the group walks across the beach, littered with broken shells and driftwood. Dindo tells them to watch their step so they don’t disturb any eggs in nests scattered across the island.
Birds line up along the low grassy vegetation by the beach – egrets, herons, terns, pelicans, snowy plovers, ibises, many more.
These birds are the morning’s main attraction.
Dindo, who is a shorebird expert, points through the brush to a bird whose neck is vibrating.
“Watch his throat,” Dindo said. “When he turns sideways. See that? He's panting. That's called buccal flutter. That's how they release heat.”
While the barrier islands off the Alabama Gulf Coast are an ideal nesting habitat for shorebirds, scientists estimate shorebird populations in the U.S. have dropped 33 percent over the last 50 years. Scientists have been working to restore the birds’ degraded habitats amid threats of human development and climate change.
No more snow birds
Nesting season for these shorebirds runs from March to August. Though the birds usually migrate after nesting season, Dindo said they’re less apt to do so now.
“Back in the 70s, they would migrate to Texas. And now they don't really migrate,” Dindo said.
That’s thanks to climate change. As falls and winters have become warmer in Alabama, most shorebirds are content sticking around all year. But a problem is they have less and less room to hang out.
One culprit behind that habitat loss is sea level rise from climate change.
“Storm surges are coming up higher. More sand is swept away with erosion,” said Scot Duncan, executive director of Alabama Audubon. “The beach changes its shape and loses its height and also loses how much habitat is along that shoreline.”
Barrier islands have always shifted. But humans have exacerbated the natural shift through development as more people live and vacation along the coast. Duncan said the birds would like to live between the waves and the dunes.
“But increasingly these days it's not the dunes, it's the condos,” Duncan said. “That narrow strip of land is all they have to work with.”
Specifically, with more development on Dauphin Island, birds have retreated to the smaller barrier islands to protect themselves.
“Coastal islands are critically important for our coastal birds because they are surrounded by a moat. They're surrounded by water,” Duncan said. “That makes it very difficult for predators to get to them.”
Duncan said when birds suffer, humans will too.
“Birds are literally the canaries in the coal mine,” Duncan said.
Fewer shorebirds indicate their marsh ecosystems are in peril, leading to erosion, degraded drinking water and disruption to fisheries.
“Birds are telling us with their population declines that we are not being good stewards of nature,” Duncan said. “We need nature for clean air, clean water, good soils for growing our food.”
Solutions take flight
Conservationists are working on projects to restore the barrier islands. The Nature Conservancy uses a combination of local sediment, native grasses and recycled oyster shells to rebuild the marsh. They’ve also installed breakwaters to absorb energy from waves that causes erosion.
On an individual scale, Duncan said beachgoers can do their part. Since trash attracts predators like raccoons and possums, clean it up while at the beach and “leave no trace.” He added if birds are minding their business along the shore, let them be.
“The saying is, ‘If the birds are squawking, keep on walking,’” Duncan said. “When you see birds resting on the beach, give them space. They've been busy hunting and feeding all day.”
Back at the beach John Dindo dispenses more knowledge to students from years of studying shorebirds. He points to a western cattle-egret flying above the water, a type of bird he says spread from Africa to South America to North America over the last 100 years.
After a few hours, the lesson ends. Dindo and the students hop back on the boats and depart from Coffee Island, with the birds’ melodious symphony of chirps and squawks fading into the distance.
