Nesting season is approaching quickly – and volunteers have been working hard to get Chester Island ready for the arrival of its Spring and Summer inhabitants. Known locally as Bird Island and Sundown Island, this 65-acre uninhabited island near Port O’Connor is one of the largest rookeries on the entire Texas coast, and has been designated a Globally Important Bird Area. From late February through early September, it becomes home to an enormous number of Colonial Waterbirds choosing to have their families in this safe environment – due to its lack of predators and human disturbance. Last year, over 16,000 nesting pair of 18 different species took part in this annual event – some birds traveling from as far away as Florida and Mexico to nest here! With a lot of new beach area created in the Fall MSC Dredging operations by Orion for the USACE, we are looking forward to a record number of Royal & Sandwich Tern.

Recent activities include:

– Monitoring erosion rate along the new shoreline. Thanks to Colt Cook w/ TPWD in POC for his help and GPS expertise.

– Monitoring a large number of White Pelican winter visitors (true snow birds) who have been hanging out with Brown Pelican and Cormorants around the island.

– Thanks to Formosa Plastic’s financial support for a new tractor, and POC’s own Robbie Sanders for donating his time and barge to move both tractors across Matagorda Bay!

– Treating Ants and clearing out Raccoons and other predators on the island.

– Tuning up weed eaters, water pump, generators, etc. that we’ll use for the upcoming Spring Workday.

– Compiling donations of material and funding to eventually replace our pier that washed away.

– I would like to give a “special thanks” to POC’s own Calvin Jackson – who has been a great friend to Chester Island and helped out tremendously this year.

Upcoming events:

– Volunteer Spring Workday is scheduled on Friday Feb 20 – planned activities include beach & island cleanup, new nesting habitat creation with Native Texas trees, and installing more Signs to warn people to stay off the island and not disturb the birds nesting along the shoreline.

– TERN training is planned for POC (Feb 27) and in Rockport (Apr 15) – by Audubon Texas TERN Coordinator Kari Howard. This program engages citizens in the community to gather valuable data about bird populations in foraging grounds and rookery habitats. (See audubontern.blogspot.com)

– As part of a Clemson University multi-year Brown Pelican tracking project around the Gulf of Mexico, Juliet Lamb and Yvan Satge’ will visit Chester Island several times throughout the nesting season. Juliet and her team fitted 14 brown pelican nesting on Chester Island in 2013-2014 with GPS trackers, and have been monitoring their travels (sites.google.com/a/g.clemson.edu/jlamb/blog).

– Also, Juliet’s group has banded many other brown pelican – so if you see one with a leg band, they would like you to grab some binoculars and try to record the band code, color and when & where you saw it – and report that to this website (projectpelican.weebly.com).

– Annual Chester Island Colonial Waterbird Survey is planned for May 22.

The Chester Island rookery is posted “no trespassing” and protected by federal law. And if you see birds nesting elsewhere – please stay away. You can disturb birds without even knowing it. We ask all fishermen and boaters to cooperate with the Texas public awareness campaign encouraging citizens to “Fish, Swim and Play from 50 yards away”.

For more information, see Audubon Texas’ website: tx.audubon.org and the Friends of Chester Island’s website: www.chesterisland.org.

-Tim Wilkinson, Warden, Chester Island Bird Sanctuary