Recoveries and Foreign Retraps of Birds Banded at Island Beach, N.J.

This paper is a comprehensive 16-year chronology of birds banded at Island Beach State Park, Island Beach, New Jersey, i July 1956 through August 1972 (excluding waterfowl and Mourning Doves) and recovered or retrapped outside of the block of Island Beach (395-0740).The Atlantic seaboard from Canada southward is fringed with peninsulas and some barrier reefs.It seems apparent that as the various birds reach tide line on their fall migration, they are confined to the coastal belt because the land falls away eastward.Each tapered finger of these peninsulas and barrier reefs constitutes a funnel along which the birds concentrate, especially near the southern extremity of each of these points of land.Netting the hosts of migrants at these fortunately situated spots has been practiced as far back as 1951.In 1959 the efforts of a number of the banders at some of these spots were coordinated, common purposes defined, and common procedures fixed.The name "Operation Recovery" was adopted for this cooperative project.Banding was first accomplished on an organized basis in the fall of 1956 at Island Beach Bird Banding Station (Ocean County), New Jersey.In 1968 the program was expanded to include a Spring "Operation Recovery" type of banding.METHODS AND DESCRIPTION OF AREA Island Beach State Park is a narrow strip of coastline, purchased by the State of New Jersey in 1953 from the Phipps Estate.It constitutes the southern 10 miles of a barrier beach, extending from Seaside Park in Ocean County to Barnegat Inlet.The peninsula is, for the most part, less than mile wide, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east and Barnegat Bay on the west.Except for the sand dunes at the ocean edge, it is level and the nature of the terrain and of the flora here makes it particularly adaptable to netting.The east portion of the Park is principally beach and sand dunes with some cover near the paved road which bisects the strip from the north end to within one mile of the Inlet.The west side of the road is almost entirely covered with natural vegetation, which in turn covers most of the 2,300 Park acres.Net lanes are located on the west side in shrub-thickets that include: wild cherry, bayberry, catbrier, oaks, holly, poison ivy, red cedar, Hudsonia and pitch pine with lesser amounts of blueberry, sumac, Virginia creeper, and various herbs.Inasmuch as the shrubs and bushes into which the birds drop to feed rarely exceed 4 to 12 feet in height (except in a few places where they reach perhaps 20 feet), it is clear that once the birds are down, they are unlikely to pass over the nets as they move along their course.