A Rare Sighting on Fort Morgan Peninsula

I trekked down to Alabama’s Fort Morgan Peninsula, a thin finger of dunes and beach the juts into the Gulf of Mexico along the southern shore of Mobile Bay. My quest: to take a look at the bird banding efforts of a group called the Hummer/Bird Study Group (HBSG).

The HBSG is a group of volunteers is dedicated to studying hummingbirds and migratory songbirds and part of their study includes the capture and banding of migratory songbirds at various locations throughout the United States. One of their primary banding sites is among the dunes and coastal scrub of Fort Morgan. For two weeks every Spring and Fall, the group sets mist nets out in the dunes of Fort Morgan State Park to capture migrating birds.

For migrating birds, Fort Morgan peninsula is perhaps one of the most important pieces of real estate along the Gulf coast.  It is particularly critical to migrating birds because it is the first landfall for arriving Spring migrants and the last departure point when they head south in the Fall.  Uncountable numbers of birds fly through this funnel point each migration season.  Taking advantage of this dense concentration of migrants, HBSG annually bands thousands of birds as they pass through the peninsula.

I hiked into the scrub and found a small group of dedicated people busily extracting birds from capture nets, weighing them, measuring them, recording the species and then gently releasing them to continue on their way. The data the HBSG collects is important to understanding populations, migrating times and species fluctuations. I had been to the site many times before, but my latest visit in April of 2012 put me there in the middle of a slow period.  For various reasons, primarily due to weather conditions, the number of birds passing through Fort Morgan was low and banding activity was slow.

He's the good looking one on the left

So I took off into the dunes to do some birding on my own. The capture nets may have been empty but the trees were alive with migrants and resident birds and I quickly spotted Swainson’s Warbler, Wood Thrush, Eastern Towhee, Palm Warbler, Hooded Warbler and Prothonotary Warbler and a dozen other species.

My best spot was yet to come. I met another birder along the trail and joined up with him. It took me many minutes to realize that it was Scott Weidensaul, naturalist, author and an accomplished birder.   Scott is one of my favorite authors ( his works include Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere With Migratory Birds, Mountains of the Heart: A Natural History of the Appalachians and Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent's Natural Soul) and I think I’ve read every one of his books.  It was a real thrill to walk through the dunes with a famous author and birder. The high point of my birding day at Fort Morgan.

The BP Spill Hits Alabama Beaches

We trekked down to Fort Morgan Peninsula to see first hand if CNN’s dire reports from the beaches were media hype. Unfortunately, the reality is even worse than the televised reports. Alabama’s beaches are just beginning to suffer from the BP oil spill but even at this early stage—when the oil is just starting to trickle onto the white sands—the enormity of what is happening in the Gulf is sad and depressing.

Fort Morgan’s beaches are awash with tar balls; black, viscous invaders that range from pea size to grape size, some the size of poker chips. Periodically there are large patches of thick gooey oil, the size of a living room, ugly and smelly. The white sand is stained, caramel colored, up to the surf line and a lacey fringe of coffee-colored foam marks the apex of each incoming wave.

In the midst of the mess we stumble upon a disaster recovery crew, under contract to BP according to the workers. They are cleaning up tar balls on the beach. With the miles of beaches that are damaged, it seems like emptying a 55 gallon drum with a teaspoon—and yeah, I know, enough teaspoons will eventually empty the drum--but I am dumbfounded that rakes and garbage bags are our best response to this disaster. With all of America’s technology this is the best we can do? Seems like a remarkably Third World solution to a First World problem. And the next day the tide brings in more tar to cover the very area just cleaned.

The water itself is oily, mixed into a frothy emulsion by the pounding surf from Hurricane Alex. A few orange booms bob in the surf, each incoming wave barely impeded in its advance as it washes over the top of the boom. I reach in the surf and pull back a slippery, oil-stained hand. Pelicans are diving into the water offshore and I wonder how often they can make those dives before their feathers are impregnated with petroleum, their gullets full of poison. How much oil can they consume before it’s too much?  The oil here is not the thick and gooey mess that accumulates in teh marshes so these birds will not show up in one of the rehab facilities.  They'll probably slowly ingest enough oil that eventually they sicken and die somewhere out at sea or in the dunes, forgotten and uncounted.

That beautiful comforting fragrance of the ocean, a mix of salt air and fish, is masked by a strong industrial odor—the kind that makes you wrinkle your nose when you drive by a refinery.

The wildlife will suffer, no doubt about it. The sandpipers and willets that normally scurry before the incoming surf are noticeably absent. We don’t see any dolphins, unusual enough that we remark on it, we almost always see them swimming and hunting near offshore. Sea turtles will have to swim through the mess to lay their eggs on the beach and then what? The plan is to remove the eggs to a hatchery on the Atlantic coast, a desperate measure with an unknown outcome.

A disaster, no doubt about it. But how bad? From my perspective the efforts of BP seem more of a PR effort than anything that is really having any effect. I can’t see anything other than a massive die off of marine creatures, the base of the food chain that feeds the birds, turtles, dolphins and fish going first, followed by the rest.

Mighty Mouse

If you travel along the precious few miles of Alabama’s Gulf Coast you will encounter an almost unending string of development. Condos, beach houses, restaurants, T-shirt shacks, golf courses, and motels dominate practically every foot of beachfront property.

This is not news of course; every state that has coastline is watching relentless development eat up its beaches and stretches of undeveloped shoreline are increasingly uncommon. One of these remnant jewels of wild coast still remains in Alabama. Drive west along Alabama Highway 180 out of the gaudy chaos of haphazard growth that stains the town of Gulf Shores and the character of the land changes immediately. Barely two miles down this small two-lane road the condos disappear, restaurants are hard to find, and spreading Southern Oak trees dripping with Spanish Moss form a shady arch over the hot asphalt.

Welcome to Fort Morgan Peninsula, a thin finger of land that thrusts westward for some eighteen miles, separating Mobile Bay from the Gulf of Mexico. With relatively untouched coastal land becoming a rarity, the peninsula is an anachronism; a beautiful, sleepy vestige of natural dunes and beaches. Unassuming private beach homes, fishing shacks, scrub land, and wild dunes are about all that there is. Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge sits halfway down the peninsula, protecting 6000 acres of land.

The attraction of Fort Morgan Peninsula is this isolation and raw splendor. For those whose idea of a great beach vacation is barhopping, dancing, golfing, and parasailing, Fort Morgan is not on the radar screen. Vacationers come here for the silence, the dark moonlit beaches. But with so little of Alabama’s beachfront left, there are many who have other ideas for Fort Morgan. Something on the order of Gulf Shores West. Developers have plans to build a number of high-density condos, practically nonexistent on the peninsula now.

This is where a tiny peninsula resident comes into the picture—perhaps the only one who can save Fort Morgan Peninsula. The Alabama Beach Mouse, an appealing little creature with large ears and huge protruding eyes, has become the center of a struggle between bulldozers and nature lovers. Thirty years ago this little mouse was living large among the beaches and dunes of Alabama. Then a combination of habitat destruction by development and tropical storms and the appearance of feral cats decimated the mouse population. Consequently, the mouse was declared an endangered species in 1985 and habitat critical to mouse survival was designated along parts of Alabama’s Gulf Coast, including parts of Fort Morgan Peninsula.

Which brings us to today. The planned condos will be built in areas that are designated as mouse habitat, but federal laws restrict many activities that may negatively affect habitat of an endangered species. In September the Sierra Club sued to suspend construction pending a determination of whether planned development would impact mouse habitat. A ruling in favor of the mouse could limit growth on much of the peninsula.

But, as with many environmental battles, this one will not end with one ruling and it will take time before a final decision is reached. In the meantime the developers, who view the peninsula as wasted land needing the golden touch of restaurants, malls, and bars that has already blighted the rest of Alabama’s coast, are waiting in the wings while peninsula residents and property owners who are opposed to further development are anxiously hoping for a favorable result.

What is certain is that the outcome of this battle will determine the future of Fort Morgan. Will it be much as it is now, its charm and beauty intact, or just another example of beachfront sprawl gone awry? For human residents, it could mean the end of an idyllic paradise. For the Alabama Beach Mouse it could mean, simply, the end.

(This article originally appeared in the Huntsville Times)

Alabama Sea Turtle Nesting

In the dim twilight on a deserted stretch of coastline on Alabama’s Fort Morgan Peninsula, a lonely figure kneels and gently touches a stethoscope to the warm sand. With the boom of the crashing surf in the background, Debi Gholson, a volunteer with the Alabama Share the Beach program, strains to hear the telltale scratching of tiny sea turtles. She is listening to a loggerhead sea turtle nest, hoping to hear live hatchlings two feet underground breaking out of their shells and digging toward the surface.

“I hear movement!” she says. Tonight could be the night to witness the remarkable sight of dozens of energetic baby turtles frantically erupting from the sand and madly sprinting to the protective waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

This particular nest was laid 56 days ago by a female loggerhead turtle, a huge and increasingly rare marine turtle that plies the waters of the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. Loggerheads weigh 150-400 pounds and measure 30-45 inches along the carapace, or back shell. They spend practically their entire lives in the ocean. Every summer the females emerge from the sea to nest. They plod across the beach, quickly dig a two-foot deep cavity with their hind flippers, and deposit 100 to 150 golf-ball-sized eggs, which they gently cover with sand. They then return to the ocean, never to see the results of their efforts, leaving distinctive crawl marks as the only sign of their presence.

If the sun warms the eggs to the right temperature, storms don't wash the nest away, coyotes or other predators don't dig up the eggs, and a dozen other conditions are just right, about two months later the eggs hatch and dozens of baby turtles miraculously bubble out of the sand and dash across the beach, dodging hungry sea gulls and ghost crabs, before reaching the relative safety of the ocean. This frantic and fragile scene is repeated dozens of times every summer on Alabama’s beaches. Fort Morgan is a particularly valuable turtle nesting area; as of the end of July, forty nests have been discovered on the peninsula, a very productive year.

The discoveries are made by a dedicated corps of volunteers and Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge employees who patrol the beaches daily during the May through August nesting season. They search for evidence of nesting and then monitor and protect the nests until they successfully hatch.

One of these nests is the one we are standing over tonight. Fifteen minutes after Debi hears the subterranean scratching, we see the sand move and a black pinky-finger sized head pops out of the sand. The first baby turtle is struggling to the surface. A tiny flipper appears, then another and a cookie-sized turtle emerges and sprints toward the surf. Suddenly the sand comes alive with dozens of baby turtles emerging from the nest. This frenzy of hatching is called the “boil” and within minutes, more than sixty baby loggerheads scramble out of the sand.

What follows is both wondrous and comedic as a handful of volunteers scramble around in the dark trying to shepherd dozens of confused and speedy critters toward the Gulf of Mexico. Evolution has conditioned the hatchlings to head toward light—which for eons was moonlight reflecting off the surf. But today streetlights and lighting from condos and beach houses lures them inland, away from the surf. The volunteers have to continuously turn the babies toward the water and herd them away from the dunes. A safe distance away, hordes of ghost crabs watch our progress, waiting for an opportunity to dart in and snatch one of these tasty morsels. If we weren’t here, there would be a deadly feast on this beach. After more than three hours of babysitting and coaxing, the last hatchling finally wades into the surf and swims into the darkness. Sixty nine eggs hatched, all of them made it safely to the water.

All of this effort is an attempt to halt the decline of sea turtles. Six species of sea turtles are found in U.S. waters and all of them are threatened or endangered. Entanglement in fishing nets, pollution and litter (turtles ingest and choke on plastic bags, balloons, and other floating debris that resembles jellyfish, their favorite food) cause numerous turtle deaths each year. Development of beachfront habitat decreases nesting success and beachfront lighting disorients hatchlings.

Adult turtles return to their birth beach to nest so one day one of these creatures will lumber back onto this beach to lay the seed for yet another generation. The dedicated work of the volunteers and professionals patrolling Alabama’s beaches bring hope that we can continue to witness the return of sea turtles to Alabama beaches for decades to come.

(This article originally appeared in the Huntsville Times)