. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. birds' excrement. They'll be tilling small plots of vegetation to see the effects. And, they may even attempt to create "artificial" bushes for the birds to use while destroyed vegetation grows back. The biologists will be manipulating the habitat in the hope of producing a more stable, long-term environment for the birds, says McCrimmon. The management possibilities include maintaining the habitat for herons and egrets as well as developing a habitat for ground-nesting birds such as least terns,
. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. birds' excrement. They'll be tilling small plots of vegetation to see the effects. And, they may even attempt to create "artificial" bushes for the birds to use while destroyed vegetation grows back. The biologists will be manipulating the habitat in the hope of producing a more stable, long-term environment for the birds, says McCrimmon. The management possibilities include maintaining the habitat for herons and egrets as well as developing a habitat for ground-nesting birds such as least terns, brown pelicans and laughing gulls, says McCrimmon. That may mean planting hardier vegetation for the herons and egrets, or changing the substrate in a way that will attract the ground nesters. i 6 T T T e'd like to make Battery a place where a variety of VV birds could find a safe place to nest for a long period of time," says McCrimmon. "There's a tendency for colonies like this to come and go. The real challenge is to make the colony suitable for 25 years or ; For example, terns and gulls may nest for only two to five years on an island before its vegetation changes and they move on to another island. But some wading birds will use the same island for as long as 25 years. Not all the birds on Battery live in harmony and McCrimmon says they may eventually choose to exclude some species from nesting. For example, fish crows nest among the herons and eat about half of the eggs which the white ibises lay. Mark Shields, one of Parnell's graduate students and the Audubon warden on Battery Island, found that fish crows are able to get the ibis eggs, regardless of the density of the vegetation where the birds nest. The crows are greedy; they take many more eggs than they can eat, says Shields. Parnell says the fish crows are one pressure on the birds they may decide to eliminate. For example, they might try to manipulate the vegetation in such a way as to reduce
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookcollectionunclibra, booksubjectoceanography
