Where Are the Nesting Black Skimmers on Big Marco Pass?

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Photos by Frank Steiger Photography

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Photos by Frank Steiger Photography

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Photos by Frank Steiger Photography

Posted Wednesday, June 19, 2024 8:00 pm

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By Maria Lamb

Black Skimmers can usually be found year-round on Marco, breeding on Big Marco Pass (BMP) Critical Wildlife Area during the summer. During the winter months, you will often see a colony resting on the beach in front of the JW Marriott or Residents Beach.

Here are the Black Skimmers’ nesting highs and lows from 2015-2024:

2024 Nesting Season – To Be Determined.

2023 – “No black skimmer nests hatched in 2023,” according to a Turrell Hall and Associates 2023 Annual Environmental Monitoring Report presented to the Hideaway Beach Tax District Board Meeting on Marco 21, 2024. The report added: “There was 10.68 acres of suitable black skimmer nesting habitat available on Sand Dollar Island and bird nesting was severely impacted by predation.”

August 29, 2023 - Hurricane Idalia brought waves that collapsed the newly constructed berms which in turn created wide breaches in many areas on BMP.

November 2022 – Tigertail Lagoon/Sand Dollar Island Ecosystem Restoration project started.

September 28, 2022 – Hurricane Ian made landfall in SW Florida.

Summer 2022 – The third consecutive nesting summer that black skimmer chicks have been observed with swollen joints on BMP. Still unknown is what killed two-thirds of the skimmer chicks from the nesting seasons of 2020, 2021.

2021 - According to the Florida Shorebird Alliance (FSA), the largest breeding colony of black skimmers on the Gulf Coast was in the Big Marco Pass Critical Wildlife Area.

Mid-July 2021 - Limping chicks with swollen ankles were collected. FWC had contracted with the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study at the University of Georgia for tissue analysis of dead birds and FDEP collected water samples.

2020 - The black skimmer nesting season was cut short due to the deadly illness where two-thirds of the chicks that hatched that year died. On December 4, 2020, Florida Fish and Wildlife (FWC) named the five bacteria that caused the unusually high mortality of black skimmer chicks on Sand Dollar Island. FWC provided the final diagnosis of bacterial dermatitis, tendinitis, and osteomyelitis with multiple bacteria isolated: Enterococcus faecalis, Staphylococcus aureus, Serratia marcescens, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

2019 - Saw a very successful Black Skimmer nesting season at Big Marco Pass.

2018 - The summer colony looked like they were having a good year, with a rate of two chicks per pair of adults. In early September, the birds (not just Black Skimmers) began to get sick, showing toxic levels from red tide.

Note on 2018 – Coastal cities all over Florida posted “Red Tide Warnings.”

Volunteers started seeing sick birds with unusual symptoms, and in early November began the progressive shorebird die-offs. For eight weeks, volunteers took multiple trips to the von Arx Wildlife Hospital, delivering sick birds where 98% of the birds did not survive the journey. The reports of dying and sick birds falling from the sky began to attract state and federal concern, and tissue samples were sent off for analysis to state and federal laboratories in order to determine why the birds were dying at such a rapid rate. They confirmed the presence of brevetoxin (Karenia brevis) in the tissues of the dead birds.

2017 - The black skimmers returned to BMP, their favorite strand of sand to rest, nest, feed and breed and had a very productive breeding season.

2016 - Black skimmers overcame the challenges of Hideaway’s dredging project and the effects of Tropical Storm Colin and the colony fledged more than 300 chicks.

2015 – According to FWC, the north end of Marco’s Beach had the largest nesting colony of Black Skimmers in the state. It recorded about 600 pairs of adult black skimmers. But that did not last long. The main predators were crows. It took about four weeks for crows to eat their way through the colony.

FWC noticed the presence of trash cans on the beach and the crows would alternate between the trash cans and the colony eating the eggs. According to FWC, the trash cans played a huge role in the Black Skimmer predation that year.

Keywords

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