2022 Meeting of the American Oystercatcher Working Group

The AMOY Working Group held its 2022 meeting as a hybrid event, with the in-person option on St. Simons Island, GA. This part of Georgia is nicknamed the Golden Isles for the color of the marsh in the fall and winter, and it lived up to its name. We learned about efforts to make Georgia’s beaches more bird-friendly from Abby Sterling and Allie Hayser and some Working Group members turned up Piping Plovers and other shorebirds on the beaches of St. Simons Island. The field trip returned the group to the Altamaha River delta, where we spotted over 200 oystercatchers (52 bands read, including some old friends from the 2017 field trip), along with at least a dozen Piping Plovers (6 banded), a banded Whimbrel carrying a data logger, a banded Caspian Tern, a banded Marbled Godwit, and a banded Herring Gull.

The hybrid format allowed for a total of 106 registrants, plus some additional office-mates for a total of at least 114 attendees. We were thrilled to once again be joined by a wide representation of site managers, researchers, students, volunteers, educators, and others. The Steering Committee is committed to continuing to provide a remote attendance option because of the opportunities it provides. Presentations included the traditional state/region/country updates, continuing discussion of habitat restoration/enhancement and human disturbance issues, as well as updates from a variety of research projects and discussion of Working Group group projects including the 2023 winter census which is just around the corner in January and February and the AMOY productivity protocol and database. We also marked a milestone: the 100,000th record in the AMOY Band Database.

A big thank-you to Tim Keyes, of Georgia DNR, who pulled together the in-person component after Hurricane Ian altered our original meeting location. We couldn’t have met in-person for the first time since 2019 without his hard work! We also thank the Zoom participants who hung in for two full days of online meetings and patiently waited out a few technical glitches (including an island-wide internet outage) with good grace! And, thanks to all who helped run the meeting–Sam Collins leading the Zoom side of things, Alex Wilke and Raya Pruner who took notes, and everyone else who chipped in!

Meeting Documents

Video Recordings

Each day of the meeting was recorded and is available in the links below. Please email Lindsay Addison for the password to open/download them.

Presentations

Limiting Disturbance from Fireworks in Hingham Harbor, MA – Lyra Brennan
Vegetation Management on Snake Island in Winthrop, MA – Lyra Brennan
Examining Foraging Habitat Quality for a Coastal Shorebird – Lyn Brown
Investigating Drivers of American Oystercatcher Chick Survival on Metompkin Island, VA – Mikayla Call
Productivity Protocol and Database Update 2022 – Pam Denmon and Lindsay Addison
The Use of Population Models to Assist in American Oystercatcher Conservation Planning – Dan Gibson
Using GPS Telemetry to Document Foraging Dynamics of the American Oystercatcher in North Carolina – Kate Goodenough
Human Disturbance at Stone Harbor Point, NJ – Meghan Kolk
Human Disturbance at Rockaway Beach, NY – Alexis Pristina
Ghost Crab Management – Raya Pruner and Lindsay Addison
Exploring Variation in Shorebird Chick Growth: A Global Collaborative Effort – Jeroen Reneerkens and Thomas Lameris
Crab Bank Restoration Project in South Carolina – Janet Tibault
Improving Reproductive Success of American Oystercatchers in Florida’s Southern Big Bend – Nick Vitale

State Updates

Florida – Raya Pruner
Massachusetts – Carolyn Mostello
New Jersey – Emily Heiser
New York – Rob Longiaru
North Carolina – Lindsay Addison
South Carolina – Janet Thibault

Photo Gallery

Coming soon!