Memorial Day weekend coincides with peak nesting season for the birds on Galveston Island, and experts caution that their nests and eggs are vulnerable to the stomping feet of unaware beach-goers.
. Coyotes, herons and ghost crabs eat them. High tides and heavy rains wash them away. While people can do nothing about these, they can minimize the threats they pose by learning to spot the nests and back away.Want to go for a bird walk? Join Kristen Vale at 8:30 a.m. on June 4 at the free East Beach parking lot at the end of Boddeker Road.Birds can carve out holes for their nests with their chests in the sand, maybe using a human footprint, maybe lining them with bits of shell.
“There are so many threats to them,” noted Stennie Meadours, a Galveston Bay area chapter master naturalist, who volunteers to educate people how to help protect the vulnerable birds. She finds them magical animals and for decades has delighted in how they just seem to appear, how the way they live is so precarious.
Both she and Vale have bird calls for phone ring tones. All around them were people playing. At some point a truck drove by, with music blasting loudly from its speakers and cutting the sound when they neared the birders. A family tossed food up to predator gulls. The nests can be anywhere — in parking lots, near a home on the West End — but are especially likely in places with less human disturbance, such as in and near the protected dunes. Vale tries to keep regular track of these birds here, where 11 species lay eggs. As the beach erodes, people spend time closer to them. Holidays, too, crowd the area.
From about Spring Break to Labor Day, one can bet birds are nesting. Some are migratory; others are residents. Birds sit for 20 or 25 days on their eggs. The chicks need another 30 days to fly. For now, on Sunday afternoon, a fussy parent circled angrily above in the sky.
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