{"id":175382,"date":"2018-08-06T22:37:05","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T02:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=175382"},"modified":"2018-08-06T22:37:05","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T02:37:05","slug":"beach-volleyball-kills-unhatched-birds-alabama-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/08\/06\/beach-volleyball-kills-unhatched-birds-alabama-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Beach volleyball kills unhatched birds on Alabama island"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The day after the damage was found, the conservation group put up ropes and signs to tell people about the Sand Island rookery of federally protected birds called least terns -and the education has worked, Katie Barnes, chief biologist for Birmingham Audubon’s Coastal Program, told AL.com. (Photo: Birmingham Audubon Coastal Programs\/Facebook)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SAND ISLAND, Ala. -Beach volleyball players on a small island off Alabama probably killed hundreds of unhatched birds, moving eggs to make room for their playing court and scaring adult birds from nests, according to Birmingham Audubon.<\/p>\n

The day after the damage was found, the conservation group put up ropes and signs to tell people about the Sand Island rookery of federally protected birds called least terns -and the education has worked, Katie Barnes, chief biologist for Birmingham Audubon’s Coastal Program, told AL.com.<\/p>\n

The rope, strung between posts, is called \u201csymbolic fencing.”<\/p>\n

\u201cEver since we put the fencing up, everyone has been very respectful. We have not seen a human footprint in the area. Boaters have not pulled up to that area,\u201dshe said.<\/p>\n

Least terns are white birds with black caps. They’re half as big as cardinals, weigh less than 1.5 ounces (42 grams) and lay eggs in shallow depressions on the sand.<\/p>\n

The damage was discovered over the Fourth of July weekend by Andrew Haffenden, who was a wildlife researcher in his native Australia and was conducting a bird survey for Birmingham Audubon on a small spit that juts off the south side of Dauphin Island.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’d seen swirls of birds out there … and then on Fourth of July weekend, I counted 17 boats out there on that island, so I was pretty disturbed,\u201dHaffenden said. \u201cI had been wanting to get out there, and looking through my scope, I could see the volleyball net and the tents.”<\/p>\n

He and others went out in a boat and found the nesting birds, and then piles of eggs.<\/p>\n

Not only did the volleyball players remove all the eggs from nests around their net, they \u201cactually made a little dome of sand and placed the eggs around it to decorate it,\u201dhe said.<\/p>\n

With 17 boats around the island, he estimated that hundreds of birds would have left their nests to avoid the people watching the game.<\/p>\n

Beach-nesting shorebirds sit on their eggs to keep them cool, and eggs without that protection would have baked to death in the hot summer sun, Haffenden said.<\/p>\n

\u201cImmediately, we informed the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. … And we told the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which added the area to their patrol route,\u201dBarnes said.<\/p>\n

Audubon also surveyed the entire island, finding 520 active least-tern nests and 13 black-skimmer nests.<\/p>\n

State officials say the current least-tern colony may be the largest on record for Alabama, Barnes said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven with all the eggs that were lost, this site has still been a huge success for the birds,\u201dshe said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SAND ISLAND, Ala. -Beach volleyball players on a small island off Alabama probably killed hundreds of unhatched birds, moving eggs …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":175390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-travel","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}