(Dave has a new email address and asked us to post this message for him.)

All,

Skimmer Island is unarguably the most important piece for barren sand 
nesting habitat for colonial nesting waterbirds in Maryland.  Since the 
early 1990s it has been the site of Maryland's only Royal Tern colony 
and has been of critical importance to breeding Black Skimmers as well.  
The island is also important to nesting Common Terns.  A few years ago a 
heronry also developed on the most stable portion of the island that has 
seen vegetation growth and  succession.  Finally, Skimmer Island is the 
most important site for Horseshoe Crab nesting in Maryland.  Thus 
Skimmer Island is a very unique and important piece of bird habitat in 
Maryland, for numerous reasons, as many of you realize.

In 1998 Skimmer Island was approximately 7acres in size.  By 2009 it had 
eroded down to 2.3 acres and as of autumn 2010 it was down to about 2.1 
acres.  Skimmer Island is in serious trouble!

For the past 18 months Maryland DNR has been working on the permitting 
necessary for a cooperative public-private project to nourish Skimmer 
Island with clean sand dredged from the approach channel to the Ocean 
City Fishing Center in west Ocean City.

After a long and sometime tortuous period during which we were still not 
certain that we would get the permits  necessary to do this project 
during 2011, the stars finally aligned  in the sky and after a whirlwind 
of activity the past couple of weeks we finalized and acquired all 
necessary permits for the project this past Thursday. Hooray!

We now have a week to dredge the sand and  place it on Skimmer Island 
before restrictions on in water work to protect Summer Flounder put an 
end to the potential window that we can work in.  So Skimmer Island will 
now very quickly receive some sand nourishment to improve nesting 
habitat conditions for Royal Terns and Black Skimmers - both species 
that are listed as endangered in Maryland.

The real purpose of this  e-mail is to alert any birders that happen to 
visit the Rt 50 Bridge, or observe Skimmer Island from other 
observations points, that you will see work related to the nourishment 
of Skimmer Island beginning TODAY, 26 March!  The contractor on this 
project is placing turbidity curtains as I write this.  They will be 
placing pipe to hydraulically move the material from the dredging site 
to Skimmer Island today and tomorrow.  On Monday 28 March we will begin 
pumping clean sand with little or no fine material in it to Skimmer 
Island.  Pumping will be completed by Thursday 31 March.  There will be 
a Bobcat on Skimmer Island grading the sand to final elevations designed 
to provide safe naturally maintaining nesting habitat for Royal Terns 
and Black Skimmers.  The key to natural maintenance of the nesting 
habitat is careful control of elevation so that nesting sites are safe 
from most summer storm tides, but exposed to winter storm over wash to 
set back vegetative succession with physical reworking and/or salt 
deposition in the sand from over-washing salt water.  When first placed 
the material will be gray, perhaps even sometimes close to black.  
However in a matter of  a few days, to a couple of weeks at most, that 
material will lighten to be almost indistinguishable form the sands of 
Skimmer Island.  The sand is the same as that placed at Homer Gudelsky 
County Park just south of the Rt. 50 bridge at the eastern end of Old 
Bridge Rd. in West Ocean City.  To get an idea of what the placed sand 
will look like, check out the park.  This project is basically an effort 
to "design with nature" and once all work is done there will be little 
or no visible sign that anything happen to Skimmer Island other than 
over winter some additional sand accreted to the island (that is 
actually artificial human engineered accretion).

All work will be completed on Skimmer Island no later that 15 April, 
probably much sooner.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to send me an e-mail 
(dbrinker at dnr.state.md.us).

BTW, on Friday there were American Oystercatchers, Great Egrets, Great 
Black-back and Herring Gulls on the island, as well as other water 
related species nearby, but I was to busy with preconstruction 
coordination to keep track of them all.  No species had initiated 
nesting, but Oystercatchers and Great Black-backed Gulls will be the 
first and that will certainly happen shortly after the project is completed.

Best regards to all!
David F. Brinker
Natural Heritage Program
Maryland Department of Natural Resources
1200 Frederick Rd.
Catonsville, Maryland 21228


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