Now that summer is here, many people will migrate by car, or truck, to the beaches of the North Atlantic Ocean, from New England to Florida, to recreate for a few days or more. They will cross salt marshes up to a few miles wide from the mainland to barrier islands where the beaches, and housing and other accomodations are. And on the way, in summer, they will see at least a few kinds of beautiful birds in those flat salt marshes that are composed mostly of salt marsh cord grass, and tidal channels and creeks, all of which are subjected to daily tides.
The 6,000 acres of protected salt marshes since 1969 at the Wetlands Institute at Stone Harbor, New Jersey is an example of those tidal wetlands. There one can stop in, and walk the trails into the surrounding salt marsh that harbors much interesting, wetland life in summer, including obvious bird life and other creatures.
When driving through any salt marsh in summer, the stately great and snowy egrets and the omnipresent, handsome laughing gulls are the birds most readily seen there. The egrets are large and white, and easily spotted as they snare small fish, such as killifish, sheepshead minnows and mummichogs in distant channels. The trim gulls often fly right along the roads where their gray tops, white underparts and black heads are readily visible to even casual observers of the marshes.
The egrets only fish in coastal salt marshes, but hatch young in stick nests in trees, mostly in The South. The egrets we see in salt marshes in mid-summer are post-breeders. But colonies of laughing gulls raise offspring in grass nurseries nestled in taller grass in salt marshes. About the biggest nesting colony of laughing gulls in North America is in the wetlands around the Wetlands Institute. Parent laughing gulls, with their black heads, search the salt marshes, coastal beaches and boardwalks for food for their young, one of the reasons they are abundant icons of those seaside habitats in summer. There they almost constantly emit their boisterous, laughing-like cries and scavenge food thrown to them by vacationing folks, much to those peoples' entertainment.
Many sections of salt marshes each hosts a pair of ospreys, most of which, these days, builds a stick nursery on a platform erected especially for ospreys in the salt marshes. Ospreys plunge from the air into the creeks and channels of salt marshes to catch larger fish to feed themselves and their two or three youngsters in their nest. It's exciting to see one of these large fish hawks diving feet-first into the water and pulling a fish from it.
Strikingly handsome male red-winged blackbirds, that are black with a red patch on each shoulder, sway on top of tall grasses as they sing their "kon-ga-reee" songs several times in succession to establish nesting territory and attract a mate for breeding and raising young. Red-wings among tall grasses along the roads are the most easily seen, of course, as are their brown and black-streaked mates building grassy cradles among the grass stems above the ground or water.
The Wetlands Institute has erected an apartment purple martin nesting house just outside its visitors' center. The pretty parent martins are entertaining to watch flying over the marsh all day every day to catch mosquitoes, green-headed flies and other flying insects to feed to their young.
Clapper rails live in salt marshes the year around, and raise young in them. These well camouflaged birds that are built like small chickens with long beaks hunt a variety of invertebrates among the tall grasses, and on the mud flats of channels when the water goes out with the tide. In fact, they are most readily seen when the tide is out, creating large mud flats where they search for worms, insects, snails, clams and other types of invertebrates. Sometimes one can hear them call "cha-cha-cha-cha" or bup-bup-bup-bup" from the depths of grass in the vast marsh
Willets are a large species of sandpipers that are not visible to most people until those marsh birds take wing. Then we can easily see the broad, white bars on each wing waving like banners as the those sandpipers fly across the marsh.
Willets nest in the salt marshes and each female lays four eggs in a grass cradle on the ground among the tall grasses.
One of the major goals of the Wetland Institute is to save as many diamond-backed terrapins as they can in the marshes around their facility. Staff there put little, wire baskets over terrapin nests in the sand to stop raccoons and skunks digging up the eggs and eating them. Staff also pick up dead terrapins on the roads to look for still-viable eggs in the females. They collect and incubate those eggs and feed the young turtles in large containers until those terrapins are large enough to not be eaten by larger gulls.
During the full moon or new moon in May thousands of large, adult horseshoe crabs, which are related to scorpions and spiders, spawn on beaches along the Atlantic Coast, including up salt creeks into the Wetlands Institute marshes. Meanwhile, many thousands of migrating shorebirds, including red knots, sanderlings, dunlin, semi-palmated sandpipers and ruddy turnstones, stop along Atlantic beaches to feed and develop fat on dull-greenish horseshoe crab eggs in the sand before continuing their flight north to the Arctic tundra to nest. The arachnid swarms and shorebird flocks together make an annual, exciting spectacle second to none.
Many fiddler crabs are seen on the mud flats of salt marsh channels when the tide goes out. Male fiddlers have one over-sized front claw they wave "hello" to get the attention of female fiddlers for mating. Fiddlers pick up sand and mud with their smaller claws and put them in their mouths to suck out and swallow any nutrients, and spit out the leached sand and mud. Some fiddlers are eaten hy willets, rails, gulls and other creatures. Fiddlers run sideways down their burrows when the water comes back and close a trapdoor behind them.
Other birds will be spotted in summer when walking on trails in the salt marshes of the Wetland Institute and other salt marshes. Common terns, least terns and black skimmers, all of which nest on beaches and similar places along the Atlantic Coast, can be seen along tidal creeks and channels in salt marshes where they catch small fish. Terns dive in headfirst after finny prey, but skimmers skim along the surface while in flight and dipping their lower mandible in the water. When the lower mandible feels a small fish, the skimmer snaps its bill shut on that victim.
Flocks of dark, long-legged glossy ibis feed on insects and other kinds of invertebrates in salt marshes at times. But they, like egrets, nest in trees and shuttle food to their young in their nests.
And seaside sparrows, salt marsh sparrows and marsh wrens nest among the tall grasses of salt marshes, and eat insects and invertebrates there. They are not so easy to see, but they can be heard, if one listens closely. The sparrows have buzzy songs that don't carry well, but the wren has a ringing, staccato song that is easy to hear.
Salt marshes harbor many interesting critters in summer. They are well worth visiting, if one can tolerate the attentions of green-headed flies.
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