Migratory Birds

Red knot, st. vincent nwr

Fifty years ago, St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge was established for a simple and beautifully explicit purpose, “as an inviolate sanctuary….for migratory birds.”  Here, resting, nesting, feeding, and wintering habitat for nearly 300 species of birds is protected.  Some reside year round, but many pass through or nest, seasonally.  The result is an ever-changing kaleidoscope of bird life on the Refuge, including:

Bald Eagle

St Vincent Island hosts seven to nine bald eagle nesting pairs each winter. Paired birds generally return each fall to breed in the same territory, often in the same nest or a nearby location.  The Gulf beaches, points and bars are also important resting and feeding grounds for juvenile eagles, and individuals that are passing through on their way south.

Red Knot

These migratory shorebirds breed in northern Canada and Alaska, and then travel tremendous distances annually to winter as far as the southern tip of South America. Red knots are highly endangered, and use our Refuge fall through spring to roost and forage for intertidal invertebrates along Gulf shoreline.

Piping Plover

This small migratory shorebird breeds in the far north, and flies south in the nonbreeding months to forage and roost on Gulf coast shorelines. The piping plover is sensitive to disturbance from humans, pets, and vehicles, so the quiet Refuge is an especially important place for it.

Ducks and Waterfowl

The island is a migratory “fly-way” for many waterfowl. Ducks have been documented as an integral part of the ecology of St. Vincent Island since the early eighteen hundreds. The history of the refuge is tightly bound with birds as the federal government purchased the refuge from the Nature Conservancy with funds from the sale of Duck Stamps.

Neotropical Songbirds

Dozens of kinds of migratory songbirds—such as warblers, vireos, buntings, orioles and grosbeaks–use the forests of this Refuge to rest and regroup as they move to southern wintering grounds in the fall, and then north again, in the spring.  During the spring migration, from early March to mid-May, strong, fast-moving cold fronts sometimes force tens of thousands of extremely tired migrants to the ground, as soon as they reach the coast. At these times, good-quality, undisturbed habitat, such as this Refuge provides, is essential.

Migratory birds managed and protected on St. Vincent NWR

  • Provision and management of habitat (i.e., hardwood forest, pine forest, brackish marshes, and open water).  Especially critical is the prescribed burning of the Refuge’s fire-adapted pine flatwoods, grasslands, and marshes.
  • Survey and monitoring programs, including annual Christmas Bird Counts, wintering and breeding shorebird surveys, bald eagle nest surveys, and monitoring of wading bird rookeries and wood duck nest boxes.
  • Management of the water levels in the Refuge’s six impoundments with drawdowns that are beneficial to shorebirds and wading birds.
  • Visitor education to communicate how and why the Refuge offers critical habitat for migratory birds. Posting of signage and symbolic fencing to keep people from inadvertently disturbing nesting or resting migratory and breeding birds.
  • Predator control in and around bird nesting sites.