2024 - 2025 Winter Stewarding Report

This season’s report is devoted to Jim Rodenfels (1952-2025),

who dedicated decades to the chapter and contributing to Audubon’s mission. Jim inspired us all with his passion, working hard to educate beachgoers on our efforts and the wellbeing of shorebirds. In addition to his outreach efforts, he enjoyed taking many photos of us and the birds, many of which were featured in our weekly stewarding recaps. Rarely in front of the camera, please enjoy this photo of Jim from Ding Darling in 2022. ASWF and the stewarding community will miss Jim dearly. His legacy will live on through our mission and the years of shorebird stewarding to come.

The shorebird stewardship program exemplifies the mission of Audubon Southwest Florida by bringing environmental education to the beaches during the critical overwintering season of the iconic shorebirds that make Southwest Florida so special.

Since 2011, shorebird stewards have built community and connected people to nature

by working with dedicated volunteers to educate the public about the shorebirds they see, why they are important to the ecosystems of SWFL, and what they can do to help the birds.

Shorebird populations have declined by 50% since 1974, making it vital that we educate the public about these species and how to respect them. In addition to education, stewards collect important community science information, adding to a long-term database used by scientists and decision makers.

The Season at a Glance

During the fall portion of Shorebird Stewarding (October-December), Lead Steward Edwin Wilke and his Assistant Yohn Villalta hosted walks across Lee County beaches to share the marvels of birding with the local community and directly contribute to avian conservation through shorebird surveys. Early in the season, the southwest Florida

coastline experienced an active hurricane season, causing much damage to SWFL’s

beautiful beaches. Despite this, the Stewarding team practiced resilience and hosted trips at a variety of beaches not previously visited by the Audubon SWFL winter shorebird stewarding program. In the aftermath of the storms, many beaches remained

closed for weeks. This forced Edwin and Yohn to adapt, which led to the selection of Gulfside City Park Beach as a new stewarding site due to its infrastructure being left largely unscathed. However, storm surge and winds reshaped the beach, creating many lagoons and expansive mudflats that served as new shorebird habitat. What was initially intended as a backup to the likes of Bunche Beach, Lovers Key SP,

and Bowditch Point, Gulfside became a fond location and was incorporated into the remainder of the season.

Over the duration of the fall, Edwin trained Yohn in shorebird identification and point counting, building his confidence to take on the winter season. Yohn quickly

gained the confidence to take over as Lead Steward in the New Year. After Edwin’s departure from the stewardship program at year’s end, Yohn recruited Caden Payne as Assistant Steward, continuing the cycle.

With the Hurricane season coming to an end and the winter portion of the season beginning (January-March), Yohn and Caden hoped to begin the New Year without adversity. Unfortunately, the annual resurgence of red tide had other plans for the two and what this would mean for the birds on the beach and the volunteers for the first two months of stewarding (January-February). Thankfully, the chosen stewarding locations during this time were largely unaffected by the toxin and there were no measured impacts on the shorebirds and volunteers. The remainder of the season made up for these setbacks, with new birds added to the season’s species list and new faces joining the stewarding sessions.

Data Collection

This year we visited a new stewardship site, introducing Gulfside City Park Beach due to the impacts of the hurricane season. As in the previous year, we continued to visit Bunche Beach, Lovers Key SP, and Bowditch Point Park. We also kept the extended season of October through March in place, allowing for more site visits and data collection. Shorebird stewarding walks were led by Edwin Wilke, FGCU senior, well-respected local birder, and FGCU Ornithology Club President from October-December. Assisting him was Yohn Villalta, FGCU alumni, Communications Intern at CREW Land & Water Trust, and Admissions Assistant at Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. From January to March, Yohn moved into the Lead Steward position and was assisted by Caden Payne, FGCU senior, FGCU Ornithology Club Historian, and Trail Maintenance Technician at CREW Land & Water Trust.

Data collection was streamlined using an avian biodiversity monitoring platform called

eBird, where members of the community worldwide can submit their own bird observations. Stewards have commonly used the platform to record birds observed on the walks, so it was already in use in the field.

Stewarding leaders were able to easily record birds seen, allowing volunteers to spend

more time observing, counting, and photographing birds. This also allowed non-

shorebirds to be easily recorded and implemented into the dataset. Finally, data

reported from stewarding walks is now permanently available to scientists and

community members worldwide.

Stewards made 23 official stewarding trips this season, including nine to Gulfside City Park beach, nine to Bunche Beach, three to Lovers Key SP, and two to Bowditch Point. Data collected from eBird in the field was then transcribed into Audubon’s dataset, which added onto decades of shorebird data collected by stewards. All the

volunteers who helped count, identify, and photograph birds are greatly appreciated.

Impact on People

Volunteers logged 146 volunteer shifts, equivalent to approximately 292 volunteer hours.

Together, we educated 249 people. Jim Rodenfels was the principal driving force behind

this effort, often staying behind the pack to engage beachgoers and spread Audubon’s mission as the stewards led the walk. Jim’s patience in speaking with strangers who knew little of Audubon and its conservation efforts was

inspiring to say the least.

Audubon Conservation Leadership Initiative alumni Ella Brown made it her goal to create an Instagram account for the chapter at the end of last year’s stewarding season. This year, the stewards utilized the platform to engage with prospective attendees by promoting the dates and locations for shorebird walks. Weekly recaps using volunteer-taken photos drove engagement with the chapter and increased attendance.

Additionally, Yohn spearheaded an effort to increase brand awareness and help boost attendance for chapter happenings including stewarding. Yohn worked with ASWF’s board to commission an update to the chapter’s long-standing logo, featuring a spruced-up Osprey and new slogan. The new logo was designed by Myn Williams, an FGCU alumni, avid graphic designer, and frequent attendee of stewardship walks.

Impact on Birds

We recorded several disturbances throughout the year that caused shorebird flocks to flush. Most notably, the heavily trafficked beach at Gulfside was the site of the most frequent disturbances. This was likely due to Gulfside being one of the only open beaches in Lee County after the hurricanes early in the season. Stewards tried their best to educate members of the public who were flushing birds when possible.

Hurricanes Milton and Idalia also affected the accessibility that shorebirds had to Lee County beaches. Some shorebirds had more access to foraging grounds as a result of expanded mudflats, while others had to relocate altogether due to lost habitat. One beach in particular, Lovers Key State Park experienced such drastic changes to their beaches that high tide consumed the entire shoreline, reducing the amount of habitat shorebirds could feed in. These compromised landscapes meant beach renourishment efforts were needed to replace sediment that was lost, which also restricted steward’s access to select locations on the beach and likely displaced the birds that were already under duress.

In the winter, the seasonal resurgence of Red Tide (Karenia brevis) had its typical implications on people and birds. For stewarding, that meant lower attendance rates from attendees who avoided the coughing, irritation, and other health effects often associated with the tide. The birds on the other hand, namely the gulls, seemed to be enjoying the tide’s spillover of dead fish and other intoxicated animals that washed ashore, gathering on the shore in a feasting frenzy for steward’s viewing pleasure.

Thankfully, that was the extent of the direct impact to the birds at stewarding locations, for the most part they appeared to be in good health and unaffected by the toxin.

We reported a few band resights, including four Piping Plovers (relocated many times over the course of the season) and one Royal Tern.

In all, we recorded 94 species and 8,548 birds.

This was 33 more species than the previous year, which can be attributed to the addition of the Gulfside site, two more stewarding dates, and the use of eBird as the primary data collection method.

Individuals were down by 306, compared with 2024 (8,854), which can be attributed to more heavily weighing on Gulfside as a site, which had high

shorebird diversity, but low abundance.

When averaged out for birds counted per trip, this season reported 50 less (371) than in 2024 (421), and even less than in 2023 (571). These changes are likely due to much change across years in site locations, frequency in which we visited each, and time of year that we visited each.

Some rare highlights included Black Scoter, Bufflehead, Red-breasted Merganser, Northern Gannet, and Common Loon. Seeing a regular Greater Yellowlegs at close range on Gulfside and observing many migrating raptors and songbirds on the coast were other special highlights from the year.

The top three most common birds this year were Laughing Gull (1088), Black Skimmer (666), and Royal Tern (634) – a divergence from the 2024 sea where the top birds were Black Skimmers (510), Sandwich Terns (485), and Western Sandpipers (240). The year before that, it was Sanderlings (2422), Western Sandpipers (1193), and Dunlin (1139). The lower abundance of ‘peeps’ this year may be due to visiting Bunche Beach fewer

times, which has extensive habitat for Calidris sandpipers. Smaller shorelines favor Larids, where they can forage off the beach in the wake.

Overall, it was a great season of stewarding! ASWF is grateful to Jim Rodenfels and all the wonderful volunteers who make it so fun to be out there.

Edwin Wilke and Yohn Villalta, April 2025