North Carolina State Library 



Raleigh q 



Doc 



University of North Carolina 

 Sea Grant Program 



NEWSLETTER 



JUNE, 1974 



12S5 Burlington Laboratories 

 NCSU, Raleigh, N. C. 27607 Phone: ( 919) 7S7-2USU 



Hi -\ — 



Young brown pelicans find life free from predators on North Carolina's dredge spoil islands. 



Designing a home for waterbirds 



Jutting skyward from North Carolina's vast 

 system of sounds and estuaries are hundreds of 

 islands— some large, some small, some dotted with 

 tall pines, others like small deserts. 



The man-made islands, built over the years with 

 sand and mud dredged from the state's 1,500 miles 

 of channels, are, for most of the year, deserted. 



But one day in May, the silence that blankets 

 the islands is broken, first by a single squawk, 

 then by the deafening screech of hundreds of water- 

 birds. 



A few weeks later, the dredge islands are teem- 

 ing with life. Terns, gulls, willets and hordes of 

 other waterbirds nest and raise their young there, 

 safe from predators and rude intrusions. 



Not much was known about the waterbirds and 

 their nesting patterns until Dr. James Parnell, 

 biologist at UNC-Wilmington, and Robert Soots of 

 Campbell College began going to the dredge islands 

 to study plant succession three springs ago. Now 

 the birds receive the focus of their Sea Grant- 

 supported research. 



Important to the birds, the researchers found, is 

 the level of vegetation covering the dredge spoil. 

 Royal terns, for instance, nest on almost bare sand. 

 Common terms prefer sparse grass, gulls nest in 

 thick grass, and herons and egrets raise their 

 young in shrubs and woody thickets. 



According to Parnell, the past pattern of de- 

 positing spoil on the islands has been fortunate. 

 Spoil is dumped periodically on some islands, re- 

 turning vegetation levels to year one, he said. After 

 drying, freshly dumped spoil becomes a perfect 

 nesting site for royal terns. 



But some environmentalists are calling for 

 changes in the costly dredging operation, changes 

 that could transfer much of the dumping to the 

 mainland. Such changes, if begun, could threaten 

 one of the very few remaining nesting sites for 

 waterbirds requiring almost no vegetation. 



Once the islands are covered with grasses, and 

 later shrubs, thickets and trees, some of the water- 



(See "Homes," page 5) 



