On a recent sunny but windy Saturday morning, several brave volunteers headed across rough waters in Matagorda Bay toward Chester Island for a beach cleanup work day. Four strong motivated volunteers and two Audubon Coastal Wardens walked the entire perimeter of the 70-acre island filling trash bags with plastic bottles, tennis shoes, flip-flops, ropes, fishing corks, and fishing string, Approximately 300 pounds of trash was bagged up. Thanks to our local POC Texas Parks and Wildlife Fisheries group for helping us dispose of the bags of trash at their facility. And a Big Thank You to our brave and dedicated volunteers for working so hard to not leave one piece of trash to harm the birds who live there for half of the year. The island is now sparkling clean and we will continue getting it ready for the Spring 2024 nesting season.

One of the perks of volunteering on the island was that we got to observe huge numbers of Neotropic Cormorant, and dozens of beautiful newly migrated White Pelican.

If you would like to volunteer on the island, please contact Peggy Wilkinson on the Chester Island Bird Sanctuary Facebook page.
=Peggy Wilkinson