Massachusetts Coast

These images are from a gallery show which I hung at a number of venues beginning in 2009. Most shots are from Mass Audubon’s Allens Pond Wildlife Sanctuary in Westport (south of New Bedford), which I visited regularly from 2005 to 2010.  The shots show many of the birds’ characteristic activities, including breeding and feeding behaviors of piping plovers and least terns.  Some twenty pairs of piping plovers nest at Allens Pond each season along with up to 200 pairs of least terns. Both are listed as threatened–the plovers at the federal level and the terns by the state. Especially for plovers, intensive management and monitoring of New England’s coastal habitat has greatly increased their population.  Ospreys are the other important species on the page–that feed almost exclusively on fish. Several dozen pairs nest each spring around the mouth of the Westport River and at Allens Pond. They’ve been banded and monitored locally for years, including placing transmitters (from 2009 to 2013) on adult osprey to follow their activity and especially their southern migrations. Rob Bierregaard, the osprey expert who placed the transmitters continues his efforts elsewhere along the coast (his latest updates are here).