Wintering Barrier Island Birds

     Southern New Jersey's barrier islands are breezy vacation hot spots along the Atlantic Ocean in summer.  But in winter, the beaches and rock jetties of those long, lean islands along the ocean harbor several kinds of wintering birds that add their beauties and intrigues to that of the pounding surf and the smell of salt spray.  These are all species that can be easily found with a little looking in the right places at the right times. 
     At least three kinds of gulls, including ring-billed, herring and great black-backs, being large and omnipresent along the sea coast, dominate the ocean breakers, beaches and jetties in winter.  There they find food of living or dead fish, mollusks, crustaceans and other edible tidbits.  And there they rest between feeding forays every winter day and night.  
     Barrier islands' sandy beaches were created by the action of endless waves shifting tiny particles of eroded rock.  And those long lines of beaches protect the marshes and wooded mainland behind them from ocean waves.  Jetties are human-made walls of large boulders extending into the ocean waves called breakers at right  angles from the beaches to protect them from being washed away by those powerful breakers.
     Several kinds of wintering birds feed in the ocean just beyond the breakers, and are seen, with binoculars, from shore.  Flocks of northern gannets dive from as much as 60 feet high into the ocean after small fish, always several at a time, creating quite a spectacle of themselves.  Each bird pulls its wings in and back just before hitting the water with a little splash.  Pulling their wings in makes gannets more stream-lined.
     Wintering red-breasted mergansers, common and red-throated loons and red-necked and horned grebes dive under water from the ocean's surface beyond the breakers to catch small fish.  These boat-shaped birds, obviously, are from different families, but they are built the same and have similar food-catching techniques because of the watery habitat they share.  Each habitat on Earth shapes the creatures in it similarly so they can best use it to their advantage and survive.  For example, fish and whales are stream-lined for life in water, though they are from different classes of animals.
     Common eiders, black scoters and surf scoters dive to shallow bottoms of the ocean, beyond the breakers, to feed on blue mussels, crabs and other ocean bottom creatures.  Gatherings of these ducks, like loons and grebes, bob on the ocean surface when resting and digesting between feeding forays.  But eiders and scoters don't compete for food with loons and grebes, which is why all those species can co-inhabit the ocean in winter.
     Long-tailed ducks and harlequin ducks seek crustacea, blue mussels and snails among the breakers and jetties respectively.  Long-tails get some of their food among the breakers, instead of beyond them, and harlequins get much of their sustenance from the jetties themselves.  Each species has its own niche, reducing competition for food with other coastal birds.
     Little groups each of purple sandpipers and ruddy turnstones, another kind of shorebird, are adapted to eating various invertebrates off rock jetties during winter.  Both these species are dark, which blends them in better with the rocks they winter on.  The resulting camouflage protects them from predatory birds, including wintering merlins.           
     Sanderlings are a pale sandpiper that winters in flocks on sandy beaches.  There method of feeding is unique and necessary when dealing with unending sheets of ocean water rolling up the beaches and back down them.  Sanderlings have adapted to getting food from the receding surf.  Groups of sanderlings run up the beaches ahead of water sliding up the beaches.  But the instant the water sweeps down the beach again, the sanderlings run right behind the receding water, stopping here and there to pull out a variety of invertebrates from it and the wet sand.  Then those pale birds run up the beach again, ahead of another sheet of water sliding up the beach.  This is how they feed all day, every winter day, which is entertaining to watch.
     Flocks of northern horned larks, snow buntings and savannah sparrows winter sparingly among some of the grassy dunes in the back part of beaches, away from the waves.  There they feed on grass and weed seeds through winter, and try to avoid the attention of merlins.
     Breakers, beaches and jetties along southern New Jersey's shore, as elsewhere along the sea coast, have unique birds wintering in them.  Those birds' beauties and habits help make those habitats more interesting during that harshest of seasons.