A sign provides information about dune wetlands and maritime forest habitat on Dauphin Island. Photo credit: Sara Barker, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Your eBirding data helps create tools that can be used to further conservation, inspire support, and inform ecological management strategies. eBird in Action is a segment which shares the conservation stories made possible because of your contributions. This edition comes from the Cornell Lab’s Land Trust Bird Conservation Initiative (LTBCI).
With a mission “to preserve ecologically valuable stopover habitat on Dauphin Island for neotropical migrant birds,” Dauphin Island Bird Sanctuaries (DIBS), an all-volunteer land trust in Alabama, was established in 1992. It’s been a challenge, but little by little, DIBS has acquired and protected 87 parcels of bird habitat on the island over the past 30 years. “We’re really all about the birds,” says Jennie Stowers, secretary of DIBS.
A barrier island with sandy beaches in the Gulf of Mexico, Dauphin Island is a popular place for vacation homes. However, because it is one of the few barrier islands with maritime forest, Dauphin Island is also a critical stopover habitat for neotropical migratory birds. Positioned directly north of Merida, which is on the Yucatan Peninsula, Dauphin Island is the first place many birds stop to rest and refuel on their annual flights north.
In 2021, DIBS used funds from a Cornell Land Trust small grant to manage 15 acres of important habitats on the barrier island. Through invasive species removal in tupelo gum swamps and dune wetlands, DIBS worked to provide more food sources and opportunities for refuge for birds stopping by the island during their yearly migrations.
Before the habitat management work took place, DIBS board member Andrew Haffenden monitored the tupelo gum swamp and dune wetland sites for birds, logging observations in eBird. He monitored again the spring after a Student Conservation Association (SCA) crew helped DIBS remove invasive plants, and will continue to monitor the sites annually, recognizing that habitat improvement doesn’t happen overnight, in six months, or even a year.
“This is biology,” he says, so he expects to monitor the sites for at least four or five years before pulling the data from eBird to analyze it. “There are many ways that you can question the data,” he notes, adding that data collected on Dauphin Island continues to help scientists at the Cornell Lab and other researchers understand trends in bird populations and fluctuations in migration paths across the Gulf of Mexico from year to year.
Your eBird observations help scientists and land managers understand how birds are moving across the landscape in your region, and can also provide valuable information about fluctuations in migration paths. Get started with eBird by starting a free account, and explore eBird Status and Trends to see where bird populations occur and how they move through time.
Read more about DIBS on the Cornell Lab’s Land Trust Bird Conservation Initiative website.