Breeding bird surveys for Gateway National Recreation Area

Tsipoura, Nellie; Mizrahi, David; Bisignano, Mike

Gateway National Recreation Area (GATE) is 26,645 acres of coastal uplands, freshwater ponds, marshes, bays and mudflats that include Sandy Hook, New Jersey; parts of the south shore of Staten Island, New York; and most of Jamaica Bay, New York; including the adjacent Rockaway Peninsula. The rich food resources found throughout the diversity of habitats within the park make it regionally important for a wide variety of avian species. The extensive salt marsh and upland islands in Jamaica Bay provide nesting habitats for gulls, terns, waterfowl, herons, rails, and several passerine species, much of this within park boundaries, while upland sites in the park provide nesting habitat for passerine species. Breezy Point at the western tip of the Rockaway peninsula, consists predominantly of dune/beach shoreline habitat, but also includes a central marsh area surrounded by scrub shrub that provides cover for birds. This area supports some of the highest concentrations of beach-nesting birds in the New York/ New Jersey Bight coastal region, including Piping Plovers (Charadrius melodus) and gulls and terns. Floyd Bennett Field is a historic civic aviation facility dominated by human-made structures and runways but with extensive areas of open space between the runways, including a grassland area restored and maintained by the National Park Service that supports grassland bird populations (Elbin and Koontz 1998), as well as scrub/shrub habitats whose bird use is not as well known.Sandy Hook is the only undeveloped barrier beach area at the northern end of the New Jersey coastline and includes wetlands, uplands, and near shore waters of the adjacent Raritan and Sandy Hook Bays that are critical for migratory species. A maritime holly forest is also found here. Finally, not much is known about the avifauna of the natural areas that are within GATE on Staten Island. These include shallow estuarine open water habitats, sandy beach, maritime forest, salt marsh, mudflats, and riparian forest. We conducted baseline studies to determine abundance and distribution patterns of passerines and secretive marsh birds during the breeding season, determine patterns of species diversity within particular species groups, and investigate habitat and site differences that underlie avian abundance, distribution, and diversity patterns. Using point count methodology, 205 points were surveyed parkwide. Using a sub-set of these points, we surveyed for secretive marsh birds using taped calls at 53 points with available habitat, 32 in Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, 10 in Staten Island and 11 in Sandy Hook.A total of 14,094 individual birds of 111 species were counted in the Gateway National Recreation area during the surveys. Of these, ten species are State Endangered, Threatened or Special Concern, including Black Skimmer (Rynchops niger, E, NJ), Black-crowned Night-Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax,T, NJ), Common Tern (Sterna hirundo,T, NY) , Least Bittern (Ixobrychus exilis, T, NY), Least Tern (Sterna antillarum, E, NJ; T, NY), Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus, E, NY/NJ), Osprey (Pandion haliaetus,T, NJ), Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus, T, NY; E, NJ), Red Knot (Calidris canutus, T, NJ), and Yellow-crowned Night-Heron (Nyctanassa violacea, T, NJ).

Breeding bird surveys for Gateway National Recreation Area

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