Woosh Netting at Fortescue

By Lukas Musher

Paris getting ready to take blood from this Short-billed Dowticher [Photo by Luke Musher]

As many of you know, I've recently started a job banding shorebirds for NJ Audubon.  On Wednesday we set up a type of net called a woosh net with the hopes of catching our first Semipalmated Sandpipers (our main study species) of the year.  Although there were several hundred shorebirds (will soon be a few thousand) present, we only caught about 20 Short-billed Dowitchers and 2 Dunlin.  Not too bad.

There are tons of horseshoe crabs spawning on the bay shore right now, and Fortescue is a good place to watch.  While they're spawning the shorebirds and gulls are present in large numbers.  Yesterday there were Least and Semipalmated Sandpipers, 2 Red Knot, Semipalmated and Black-bellied Plovers, Sanderling, Dunlin, and Short-billed Dowitchers including a beautiful hendersoni.

[Photo by Bruno Almeida]

Woosh nets operate a lot like a cannon net, except that it is fired by bungee chord instead of by cannon.  Two poles are stuck into the sand and act as a guide for the net when it is fired.  When the birds get within range of the net it is fired by pulling a string that pulls pins our allowing the bungees to release.  Watch: 

[Photo by Bruno Almeida]

[Photo by Bruno Almeida]

[Photo by Bruno Almeida]

[Photo by Bruno Almeida]

FIRE! [Photo by Bruno Almeida]

[Photo by Bruno Almeida]

[Photo by Bruno Almeida]