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Egrets and white ibis are nesting in New Jersey

They are nesting on an island beneath the heavily trafficked Ninth Street causeway into Ocean City.

An American Great Egret carries material to build a nest at the rookery, by the Roy Gillian Ocean City Welcome Center, on the 9th Street causeway over the Great Egg Harbor Bay in Ocean City, N.J.
An American Great Egret carries material to build a nest at the rookery, by the Roy Gillian Ocean City Welcome Center, on the 9th Street causeway over the Great Egg Harbor Bay in Ocean City, N.J.Read moreElizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer

White ibis and great egrets, a species of birds with plumage so magnificent that it almost resulted in their elimination from the planet, have taken up residency at the Jersey Shore in — what to humans, at least — would be considered an unlikely place.

They are nesting on an island beneath the heavily trafficked Ninth Street causeway into Ocean City, and they have evermore company, says Brett Ewald, director of the Cape May Bird Observatory.

“That is an incredible diversity of herons and egrets nesting there,” he said, adding that one factor may well be the overall warming trend that is luring more species northward.

“Until three years ago, the white ibis, to our knowledge, had never been in New Jersey,” Ewald said. In 2021, “There was only one nest,” he added, and last year over 400 were counted.

Said Rick Wiltraut, a retired environmental education and lifelong bird enthusiast well familiar with the Ocean City rookery, “The white ibis are the ones that have really exploded.”

Aside from a refuge from the ultrahigh real estate and rental costs on the barrier islands, that area near the Ocean City Welcome Center has other attractions, said Ewald, and he understands why they would choose it over his gorgeous observatory area 25 miles to the south, as the egret flies.

For one thing, it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet, says Wiltraut: “They have all the food they want. They eat crabs, they eat fish.”

And overall, “It’s an ideal location,” a wooded area relatively free of predators, he added.

The woods are an attraction: Although both egrets and white ibis have long, stilt-like legs, they nest in trees, said Ewald.

Any number of species owe their lives to great egrets, bird experts say.

In the 19th century they were hunted for their plumes, their signature mating apparel. The plumes, called aigrettes, were coveted additions for women’s hats.

An 1895 news article in a Chester County newspaper noted that they had all but disappeared from South Florida.

The slaughter of the egrets led to some of the nation’s first bird-protection laws, Ewald said, and the great egret became the official symbol of the National Audubon Society.