September Wrack Line Newsletter 2025 - The Newsletter of the Florida Shorebird Alliance September 2025

Newsletter of the Florida Shorebird Alliance September 2025 Fall is just around the corner, and royal terns lose their black crests as their reproductive season comes to an end. Photo by Britt Brown Having trouble viewing this email? View it as a Web page.

In This Issue Reminders Events FSA News FSD Updates Ebb Tidings Reminders September 6. World Shorebirds Day  September 13-21. Latino Conservation Week  October 1. Florida Shorebird Database Data Entry Deadline Events Post-season Partnership Meetings October 1. 1pm-3pm. Volusia Partnersip Meeting. Daytona Beach. Contact Jennifer Winters, or Jaymie Renecker October 2. 9am-12pm. Timucuan Partnership Meeting. Ribault Club. Contact Blair Hayman, Hailey Dedmon, or Chris Farrell October 2. 11am-13pm.Suncoast Partnership Meeting. Zoom call. Contact Beth Forys or Kara Durda October 6. 9am-12pm. St. Johns/Flagler Partnership Meeting. St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park. Contact Hailey Dedmon, Chris Farrell, or Alex Kropp October 17. 9am-12pm. Space Coast Partnership Meeting. Nyami Nyami River Lodge at Brevard Zoo. Contact Hailey Dedmon, Amanda Hipps, or Yagen Gutierrez October 22. 10am-3pm. Panhandle Partnership Meeting. Gulf Coast State College, Gibson Hall (room 231), Student Union East (2nd floor). Contact Raya Pruner, Nick Vitale, or Col Lauzau FSA News Thank you, FSA Partners! The 2025 shorebird and seabird breeding season is coming to an end and the conservation gains are a result of your hard work! Each breeding season, a coordinated network of stewards, rooftop monitors, route surveyors, biologists and law enforcement officers make it possible for shorebirds to successfully nest along Florida’s coasts. Once again this season, FSA partners met new challenges with grit and grace to ensure a best-case breeding scenario for some of Florida's most charismatic coastal inhabitants. To all of the volunteers, land managers, interns, students, officers, shorebird staff, partnership coordinators and many others - THANK YOU - for your ongoing dedication to raising another generation of Florida's shorebirds and seabirds. The vast network of the Florida Shorebird Alliance makes breeding success possible and highlights the ongoing need for partnership-driven conservation. Your dedication is priceless and greatly appreciated! To learn more about the successes and challenges from the breeding season, you're invited to attend any FSA partnership meetings. They're free and open to the public. Most post-season partnership meetings occur in October. Please contact a local FSA Partnership Coordinator for details about upcoming meetings.   Still Going Strong American oystercatcher banded Red R5 was featured in the Wrack Line in July 2018 when she turned 10 years old. In 2008, she was banded as a chick near the Amelia River in Nassau County by researchers from the American Oystercatcher Working Group. She left Florida and spent a brief period on the North Carolina shores before moving south again and settling along the Tolomato River, near St. Augustine in 2010. We decided to check on her by making use of our database and FSA partners who regularly survey the Tolomato River. As it turns out, R5 is still going strong at 17 years of age (a senior, by oystercatcher standards) and continues to nest along the river (15 years later!). She has nested continuously with her partner every year on the same shell rakes. R5’s nesting success has been moderate, as that particular site has been frequently overwashed by high tides and storm events. Despite that, she still attempts to nest in the same area, as breeding site fidelity is very emblematic of American oystercatchers. We shouldn’t be too quick to judge this trait, however. Evolution shapes successful behaviors, and while we may interpret this persistence as hard-headedness, it may have played out as a positive trait throughout the species’ evolutionary history.  Red R5 is one of the 419 breeding individuals in Florida. A very small population by conservation standards. Red R5’s story, along with other shorebirds in the state, is tracked through the efforts made by the Florida Shorebird Alliance. Thanks to our FSA Partners, banded birds are resighted and reported during the nesting season, and this information contributes to important demographic information about our focal species. Let's celebrate another year for Red R5!  Red R5 and her partner walking along their favorite shell rake earlier this year. Despite two nesting attempts, they were unable to fledge any chicks this year.  Photo by Pedro Lopez International collaboration provides insight into the conservation of Roseate Terns Roseate Terns have an interesting distribution, with two separate nesting populations in the United States. One nesting population is in the northeast, from New York northwards; and the other is in the southernmost tip of Florida. The latter nesting population is actually part of a broader one scattered throughout the Caribbean and the north shores of South America. Roseate tern numbers have been declining for decades, and the species is federally listed.   Researchers have been independently working to conserve roseate terns, but it is challenging working on a migratory species that moves large distances. Last year, the Roseate Tern Working Group was formed in order to exchange ideas, provide support and updates on the status, trends, and ongoing recovery efforts in the countries where they occur. These experts meet once a year and discuss bird banding, movement tracking, key threats, surveys, monitoring, and sea level rise impacts on their populations. The next meeting is scheduled for February 2026 and will be led by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.   Roseate terns keep their black caps throughout the year, unlike royal terns who lose the front of their caps in the Fall. One of their distinguishing features is their red legs when they reach maturity. They are more common in south Florida. Photo by Ricardo Zambrano September 6th is World Shorebirds Day Photo by Britt Brown Shorebirds are amazing - they exist in one of Earth's most dynamic environments. Coastlines are constantly being devoured and resurfaced by the sea, and beaches can become unrecognizable within days. Nothing remains constant in the limit between land and water. Shorebirds managed to etch a living in this ever-shifting environment for millions of years. As of the last decades, however, many species have suffered significant population declines. The factors that contribute to these declines are multiple and affect breeding, wintering, and migratory populations. With that in mind, World Shorebirds Day was conceived as an effort to raise global awareness about shorebird conservation challenges. Mark the date -- September 6th -- to participate in a week-long citizen science effort. Visit worldshorebirdsday.org for more information and to get involved.   FSD Updates   The Florida Shorebird Database closes for the season on October 1! Another breeding season is coming to an end, which means it’s time to finish entering your monitoring data before the FSD closes on October 1! Now is also a good time to double-check the data you've already entered. All data entered into the FSD are reviewed to ensure that everything is collected and entered consistently across the state, is free of typos, and to bring additional clarity to unique circumstances. It’s possible that you’ve already heard from an FSD data reviewer. Please know that this is a normal part of the quality control process, and these conversations ensure your data will most effectively guide conservation, research, and management of these species. To help out this data review process, here’s a quick checklist of things to look for: Additional breeding adults on your route? Check to make sure your totals of additional breeding AMOY, SNPL, and WIPL make sense for each route survey you entered during the 2025 season. If you were able to account for ALL breeding shorebirds on your route at nest sites and/or with roving chicks, the counts of additional breeding adults observed along a route should be reported as 0 for each survey. If you indicated "Did not count" for this category, please indicate why in the associated Route Survey Comments. As a reminder, "Did not count" means you were unable to survey for these additional breeding shorebirds because of weather, time constraints, or other factors.  Do all your sites have a final outcome? Check if the last visit to each of your sites (solitary nests, ground colonies, and rooftops) provides a final outcome. If the last visit to a site is still 'Active' please edit the next route survey to include your best estimation of that site's final outcome. Refer to the 2025 Breeding Bird Protocol for Florida's Shorebirds and Seabirds for guidance on how to determine the final outcome of a given site. Ideally, you will be able to document a final outcome for all your sites entered into the FSD; for some late season sites, however, this might not be possible.  Are nesting locations correct? Check to make sure nesting sites are not located in the water or in heavily vegetated areas. Sometimes the imagery in the FSD's map does not match up with the on-the-ground reality.  If the location is indeed correct, but the imagery does not match up, please let us know by adding a comment to any associated Site Visits or including this information in the Site Descriptions.  Are the count types accurate? Check that the count types for surveys of colony and rooftop sites are accurate. This is an easy place for typos to accidentally occur! If you could see the entire colony or rooftop, your count type is probably Direct. If you couldn’t see the entire colony or rooftop and you had to do a little bit of math to calculate the count, your count type was Extrapolated. If you’re unsure, you can consult our handy Count Types Guide. Are there any typos? Look for duplicated entries, counts that seem unusually high or low (e.g., 200 vs. 20), or any other possible typos in your data. You can always leave clarifying comments in the site visit notes detailing unexpected or unusual field scenarios! As always, feel free to email us at FLShorebirdDatabase@MyFWC.com if you have any questions, concerns, or cannot make the October 1st deadline. Thank you for another dedicated season of monitoring! Ebb Tidings Read this interesting article from Audubon Florida about the breeding success of American oystercatchers following the 2024 hurricane season: Year of the Oystercatcher | Audubon Illustration by Karl Mokross

Want to get involved? Email Shorebird@MyFWC.com for more information about your local partnership.     Join the flock on social media: Florida Shorebird Alliance Facebook Group The Florida Shorebird Alliance (FSA) is a partnership of agencies, non-government organizations, and individuals committed to shorebird and seabird conservation in Florida. FSA partners coordinate their independent work and collaborate to address research, management, education, outreach, and public policy needs.

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