The Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey's Board of Directors held their annual meeting at Sedge on a gorgeous day in June – the summer solstice. Several board members had spent the previous night and they greeted us at the dock with tales of catching bluefish early that morning. The first part of the day was spent dealing with the business part of the meeting. At lunch intern Ryan Ballou provided a special treat by serving six pounds of pan seared ocean scallops fresh from his Point Pleasant restaurant. Later Tom Virzi, former Assistant Program Director at Sedge, told the group about his research on American Oyster Catchers, calling particular attention to the need for protecting dredge island habitat of these beach-nesting birds.
Almost everyone wanted to go kayaking so we launched the boats and paddled out into the salt marsh. Tom gave the group a great show as he climbed into an osprey nest to bring down and band a three-week-old chick. We then paddled into some of the salt marsh channels closer to the Peregrine Falcon hacking tower. It was a pleasure to have this group checking out “our” peregrines and comparing them to “their” peregrines that can be seen so well on the peregrine cam web site.
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