by Alexis Baldera, Senior Coastal Program Manager, Audubon Texas
Published July 25, 2024
Many of our coastal birds in Texas nest directly on the beach. Species like Black Skimmers and Least Tern make a scrape in the sand and lay their eggs on the ground. Their eggs are perfectly camouflaged among the sand and shell which helps protect their eggs from predators. However, this also makes their nests susceptible to high water. When early hurricanes and tropical storms hit the Texas coast like they did this year, these birds are often the most heavily impacted.
Following Hurricane Beryl and the earlier tropical storm, Alberto our team visited sites to see how the low-lying beach-nesting sites fared. We were disappointed to see all our beach nesting sites submerged from Tropical Storm Alberto’s storm surge in June. Some birds started renesting when water subsided, only to be impacted again when Hurricane Beryl came ashore in early July. Although a rough estimate, we likely lost all of our Black Skimmer nests for the 2024 breeding season in Galveston Bay. There are some inland sites monitored by our partners that may have survived the storms and we will be collaborating throughout the year to fully assess the coastwide impacts.
In addition, to monitoring our leased bird islands, this year we are excited to join a coalition of groups who work to protect beach-nesting birds across the coast. American Bird Conservancy, Gulf Coast Bird Observatory, Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries and Houston Audubon have been stewarding these birds for over ten years. Our team joined the effort to monitor Least Tern, Black Skimmer, Snowy Plover, and Wilson’s Plover sites in the Matagorda Bay region. All of our monitored sites around Matagorda Bay for these species were submerged following Tropical Strom Alberto. We will continue to monitor these sites and hope to see more attempts to renest or juvenile birds which would indicate that some nests hatched early enough for the chicks to survive the impacts of the storm.
Hurricanes are part of life on the Texas Coast, but climate change is worsening hurricane impacts overall. Increasing intensity of storms and decreasing speeds at which they travel means more coastal flooding, putting low lying rookery islands and human communities at risk. Populations of coastal birds, especially the beach-nesting species, are particularly vulnerable.
Beyond building these sites higher, it is important that we reduce the overall disturbance to these birds. If nests are lost early in the season, the birds will try to renest. They may return to the island when the water recedes, or they move inland. Either way, when they are exposed to disturbance, they are less likely to successfully hatch their chicks and fledge their young. Disturbance can be from people walking or boating near a site, it can be from natural predators, or it can be dogs off leash. If we can reduce the overall stressors on the birds, their populations stand a better chance of rebounding after hurricanes and other large events pass.
