Tag Archives: New Jersey Audubon

Quail update – August 2017

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In our last update from June on the quail translocation project, we were all very excited to hear about the first confirmed nest. Now there’s even better news from the forest – there are baby quail hatching again!

This may be the most successful stage yet for New Jersey Audubon’s Northern Bobwhite Restoration Project. A little background from the website:

New Jersey Audubon has been steadfastly working, with its project collaborators (Tall Timbers Research Station, the University of Delaware, Pine Island Cranberry Company, Pine Creek Forestry and the NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife) over the past three years to study translocation as a viable method of creating a sustainable wild population of Bobwhite Quail back in New Jersey. In wildlife conservation, the term ‘Translocation’ means the capture, transport and release/introduce a species from one area to another with the ultimate goals of species population persistence and resilience at the release area. In New Jersey the Northern Bobwhite Quail was once a common species, however it is now believed to be functionally extinct in the state, thus translocation offers an option to “jump-start” the species on the road to recovery in its former home in NJ.

“We’ve found 12 nests this year,” says John Parke, NJA Stewardship Project Director. “Of those dozen nests, five were depredated and three have hatched, with a total of forty chicks hatched so far. There are four nests still active that could hatch any day now.”

Some other fun facts from the project: 240 wild birds have been released since 2015, with 38 nests confirmed to date and 97 chicks confirmed hatched. This year makes the first time a male has successfully incubated a nest all the way through, as well as the first year for a double clutch. Even better, NJA has received approval for a fourth year release!

“Reproductive success is a critical component of the translocation project,” John says. “We are very excited to confirm the successful hatching of a double clutch nest, and a male successfully incubating to completion, because it reflects the quality of habitat on site that was achieved through the management. By performing active management on the land a balance of different cover types for nesting, brood rearing, and foraging allows for the translocated Bobwhite to take advantage of their naturally high reproductive potential.”

* Photos courtesy Phil Coppola

Quail project update – June 2017

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As you may remember, New Jersey Audubon was here this spring for the third-stage release in the Northern Bobwhite Restoration Initiative.

The most exciting news from this month: the field researchers have discovered an active nest close to the Sim Place release site!

“We are working to create permanence with Northern Bobwhite in New Jersey,” said John Parke, Stewardship Project Director – North Region, NJA. “In reviewing the data collected over the last few years and seeing these wild birds adapt to their new surroundings and successfully nest is a testament to how important active management is to maintain forest health and wildlife diversity,” Parke said. “The Northern Bobwhite Restoration Initiative has implications for quail recovery in the Mid-Atlantic, is providing information on other species that use these same managed forest habitat, and is motivating others to implement forest management. We are excited by the progress of the project, the hard work of the project partners and collaborators and eager to see Bobwhite thrive again in New Jersey,” he added.

According to John, predator surveys have been fairly low, though snakes are always a concern. But Phil Coppola and the rest of the University of Delaware research team will continue tracking the birds and keeping tabs on the nest, and are hoping to bring us good news soon! In the meantime, though, we’re all enjoying the opportunity to once again hear the bobwhite quail once again calling in the pines.

This has been a great opportunity for Pine Island Cranberry to work with so many organizations who love the pines as much as we do, and it’s wonderful seeing the Bobwhite quail making themselves at home here once again.

*Photos courtesy of John Parke and Phil Coppola.

Third stage quail release

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This month Pine Island Cranberry once again met with John Parke of New Jersey Audubon to release the final group of quail for the last stage of their translocation project!

Per the NJA release:

Led by New Jersey Audubon, with project collaborators Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy, the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife and the University of Delaware, 80 wild birds (40 males and 40 females) were captured in Georgia, translocated, and released, at the Pine Island Cranberry study site. The New Jersey portion of this project has the unique role of releasing only wild quail (translocation). Other partners to the multi-state project are evaluating methods of raising captive bred and parent reared quail, however no captive bred quail will be released in New Jersey. Ultimately, the results of the NJ study will be compared to findings from the other participating states in the initiative.

This year’s release was done over the course of a few days, and Pine Island team members have even spotted the birds out and about near some of the release sites! “I’ve never seen them that close out in the woods,” says Matt Giberson. “It was really cool to see them walking around!”

New Jersey Audubon says there’s even more good news:

The success of the project at Pine Island, combined with years of habitat restoration work lead by NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife in Cumberland County has, for the first time ever in New Jersey, lead to the allocation of federal funding through the USDA-NRCS Working Lands for Wildlife Program specifically for quail habitat restoration.

“Landowners and farmers that take advantage of this cost share program will help establish habitat for quail and other species, while also helping to address forest health issues such as fuel load reduction, control of forest diseases and pests, and ultimately successful regeneration and forest function,” says John Parke.

This has been a great chance for Pine Island Cranberry to work with so many organizations who love the pines as much as we do, and it’s wonderful seeing the Bobwhite quail making themselves at home here once again!

Quail traps

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The latest from the NJ Audubon Northern Bobwhite Restoration Initiative: trapping birds for collar and release! The quail in this project are tracked via radio telemetry in the field to determine movements, predation, site fidelity, habitat use and nesting by graduate students from the University of Delaware.

When the birds for this project are relocated from Georgia to New Jersey, they are fitted with radio collars for tracking. From the NJ Audubon website:

Each quail was outfitted with a radio transmitter fitted around their neck. The birds arrived in NJ with the transmitters attached, each broadcasting a unique radio frequency. Using a radio receiver and antenna each bird can be located and through the signal their location and status (alive or dead) can be determined. Tracking began immediately following the release and revealed the birds were sticking together in coveys and they remained within the general area of where they were released.

These collars last about ten to eleven months, per John Parke of NJ Audubon. But when cold weather sets in, it shortens the battery life. So the team has to catch the birds in order to replace their collars. This past Monday, John, along with fellow NJA staffers Lindsey Gafford and Ryan Hasko, came down to meet with Kaili Stevens to weigh any quail found in the traps and re-collar them with new transmitters.

The traps are carefully placed and baited (currently with cracked corn, but Kaili is looking for millet as well), then slightly camouflaged with tree branches. Each location is marked so that the researchers and staff can find it easily.

Kaili then demonstrated the best method for holding the birds while recollaring them before releasing them back into the wild.

NJ Audubon will be out in the field every week to check the traps and make sure the birds are thriving! They’ve already proven themselves to be tremendously resilient, and we hope to have more good news after the third and final release this spring!

New Jersey Audubon: CSC meeting 2016

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This week, it was once again time for the annual New Jersey Audubon Corporate Stewardship Council meeting. The Corporate Stewardship Council is a unique group of New Jersey companies united behind a common goal of environmental sustainability and responsibility in NJ and meets as a group annually with the NJ Audubon and representatives of the NJ DEP and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This year’s meeting was held Thursday in Trenton, and while CEO Bill Haines was unable to attend, he sent his daughter Stefanie Haines as his representative. Most of the meeting consisted of summaries and updates of projects from the past year and an introduction to new projects. Of particular interest to Pine Island was speaker Andrew Johnson, director of the Watershed Protection Program, William Penn Foundation.

Water-052

Good water management is not only the crucial part of our work here at Pine Island – it’s essential to the balance of agriculture production with the Pinelands environment. To that end, we have over the course of many years carefully crafted a system that works with both nature and gravity to best maintain and preserve the bounty of natural resources available to us. This makes the work that the William Penn Foundation does with the Delaware River Watershed Initiative particularly important to us, as one of the areas they have targeted as a subwatershed “cluster” is the Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer, which provides so much of the water that our cranberries need.

Water---SBT

One of the initiative’s goals include:

Permanently protecting more than 30,000 acres of forested headwaters in critical areas. . .These efforts will preserve essential habitats and mitigate climate change as well as sustain water quality in the more intact sub-watersheds.

One of Pine Island Cranberry’s core values has always been protecting the environment: caring for the place where we live, work, and grow. To that end, we have been working since 2001 with forester Bob Williams of Pine Creek Forestry to create and implement a forest stewardship plan. Creating a specific plan helps us protect and improve forest resources by doing practices such as prescribed burning, thinning, and replanting with improved trees. We are improving the forest habitat while at the same time conducting all the necessary work to have a thriving, profitable cranberry operation and protecting our water supply.

water moving to the next bog

NJ Audubon Stewardship Project Director John Parke then gave the attendees an overview of several projects that council members have worked on over the past year. His genuine enthusiasm and joy with what he does, as always, made his energy contagious, and it was great to hear about some of the other ongoing projects that are happening statewide! It was especially exciting to hear about the work Atlantic City Electric is doing for the bobwhite quail:

[Their] project proposal aims to increase resources for for northern bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus)by creating and managing early successional habitat. Proposed restoration activities include planting native grasses and forbs to improve foraging habitat, retaining native shrubs for winter cover, and creating small canopy openings along the transmission lines to expand habitat.

It was wonderful to have some time to chat with people who share our commitment to resource conservation and are equally committed to putting in the hard work to make it happen, and we are grateful to New Jersey Audubon for giving us the opportunity!