PROVIDING SAFE haven for nesting waterbirds 



White ibises sun themselves on Carrot Island near Beaufort, N.C. 



By Kathy Hart 



Approach one of the small, bare 

 estuarine islands that dots North Carolina's 

 brackish waters on a May day, and you'll 

 create mayhem. 



A massive cloud of squawking terns 

 will rise off the sandy substrate and billow 

 into the sky, careening and crying out a 

 chorus of "stay away." 



Below the hovering mass of anxious 

 birds lie hundreds of speckled eggs spaced 

 inches apart in an equidistant geometric 

 formation that defies the usual random 

 patterns of Mother Nature. 



The bare, sandy island is a hatcheiy 

 for a nesting colony of royal terns — one 

 of 25 species of waterbirds that nest en 

 masse along the Tar Heel coast. 



Colonial waterbirds — gulls, terns, 

 skimmers, herons, egrets, ibises and 

 pelicans — are as much a part of the 

 coastal panorama as sea oats, crashing 



waves and fiddler crabs. And they're an 

 important part too, says Walker Golder, 

 manager of the National Audubon 

 Society's N.C. Coastal Island Sanctuary 

 System. 



"These birds are important to the 

 coastal food chain," Golder says. "They 

 provide energetic pathways in wetlands. 

 They're pretty to look at. And they are 

 excellent indicators of environmental 

 quality." 



In fact, these waterbirds are thought 

 to be so vital to our coastal ecosystem as 

 to require management of their nesting 

 and feeding habitat. 



In what is considered a unique 

 agreement, state and federal resource 

 management agencies and private 

 organizations have banded together to 

 manage the habitat needs of colonial 

 waterbirds in North Carolina. 



The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commis- 



sion acts as the lead agency for this 

 interagency coordinating committee that 

 includes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 

 the National Park Service, the N.C. 

 Division of Parks and Recreation, the N.C. 

 Department of Administration, the U.S. 

 Army Corps of Engineers, the National 

 Marine Fisheries Service, the Nature 

 Conservancy and the National Audubon 

 Society. 



For scientific advice about these birds, 

 the committee relies heavily on the word 

 of one man — James Parnell, a nationally 

 renowned ornithologist at the University of 

 North Carolina at Wilmington. Parnell has 

 devoted much of his research career to 

 studying the habits and habitats of colonial 

 waterbirds. 



Sea Grant funded Parnell's first North 

 Carolina colonial waterbird census in 1976, 

 the atlas resulting from the census, 

 subsequent population evaluations and 



2 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1992 



