"Ah, I'm so proud of this colony," said Chris Kisiel, senior environmental specialist with the state Division of Fish and Wildlife's Endangered and Nongame Species Program.
Two years ago, most of the skimmers were on the remote southern tip of Stone Harbor or nearby Champagne Island. But the tidal island disappeared under water, and the Hereford Inlet area of Stone Harbor flooded, attracting predator gulls and foxes and sending the skimmers to the little strand with a view of Longport and the north end of Ocean City.
"It is very surprising," Kisiel said, peering through binoculars at the edge of the beach, which the state has roped off for several years as a protected nesting area for terns, plovers, and skimmers. Each year has brought a dramatic increase in the skimmer count. "It just seems so incredibly odd to have the road so close."
But close it is, with the entire breathtakingly choreographed colony sometimes soaring out over cyclists, trucks, and loaded-up SUVS on the road before landing back again near the edge of the bay.
A similar display of ospreys is available for viewing from your car as you drive over the Margate Bridge, where several wooden nests the state erected have yielded a banner year for the family-oriented birds and their young. And from busy Wellington Avenue in Ventnor, egrets are visible in marshes across from the Pathmark supermarket and the new Checkers restaurant.
Tourists travel thousands of miles to national parks to pull their cars over and stand gazing through binoculars at ospreys and other birds, but in Atlantic County, only a handful ever stop to look on their way to the beach.
