Harbor Herons in New York
New York City Audubon Monitors Wading Birds on Harbor Islands
New York Harbor, once home to few wading birds, now hosts more than 1700 breeding pairs. New York City Audubon monitors, protects, and showcases them.
History of herons and other wading birds
Herons, egrets, and ibis have had a difficult time in North America. A number of species, including the Great Egret were hunted and killed for their feathers, and were nearly extinct by 1900. Meanwhile, human destruction of their breeding habitat and foraging grounds, and water pollution, affected them as well. Only a turnaround in human attitudes toward these birds has saved them.
Today, the fortunes of the wading birds seem to have changed for the better and probably no place exemplifies this more than the city of New York. Once a center of the millinery trade that encouraged the slaughter of birds for feathers, and known for its polluted harbor, the city now hosts more than 1770 breeding pairs of wading birds on harbor islands: Great Egrets, Snowy Egrets, Glossy Ibis, Black-crowned Night-herons, and Yellow-crowned Night-herons all return each year to nest on the islands.
Wading birds return to New York
The turnaround started in 1972 with the passage of the Clean Water Act, a piece of legislation that resulted in significant improvements in the water quality in the harbor. By the 1980s birds were starting to return to a number of harbor islands, once used by humans but now abandoned and reverting to nature. There, they found the bushes and trees they needed for nesting, solitude from human activities, and abundant food in nearby coastal wetlands. For some of them, it was a refuge from breeding and foraging range to the south where agricultural runoff continues to degrade habitat.
New York Audubon’s Harbor Herons Project
When Scotty Jenkins discovered egrets nesting on an island near Staten Island, he knew it was an historic discovery, and New York City Audubon knew it was something they wanted to nurture and protect. The Harbor Herons Project was born. For more than twenty years now, they’ve monitored the breeding wading birds on harbor islands, protecting them from human interference as much as possible, but at the same time, advertising the fact that New York City has a natural treasure right in the middle of the harbor.
Today, NYC Audubon continues to monitor harbor islands—there are at least eleven islands where herons and other wading birds are breeding, or are likely to breed in the future, and most of them are now designated both parkland and Important Bird Areas in New York State. New York City Audubon also monitors foraging grounds, realizing that protecting the birds means protecting their food supply as well as their nesting sites.
To educate the public and alert people to the beautiful and fascinating colonies of wading birds in their midst, NYC Audubon maintains a web cam—the Heron-cam—on Goose Island, and gives guided harbor Sunset Eco-cruises from June to Aug, taking people near some of the islands to see nesting harbor herons up close. The challenge is to let people learn about the harbor herons and see them on their island refuges without disturbing the birds—too much human activity on the islands might cause the birds to abandon the sites. That would be a loss for both the harbor herons and the people of New York.
Read about two of the New York Harbor islands where harbor herons nest:
Hoffman and Swinburne—Bird Isles
Sources:
Crawford, Alan Pell. “Safe Harbor” Vegetarian Times: 2007; April. p. 48 – 50
