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Business takes a back seat to nesting birds

The least tern, which looks like a little sea gull, gets help from all corners as its habitat disappears.

By JON WILSON
Published June 19, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - Richard Griswold didn't fancy himself a bird lover. Then he met some least terns, short little guys that frequently nest on old-fashioned gravel roofs.

A young one recently fell off at Global Stone, an importing company at 3120 46th Ave. N near Joe's Creek, where Griswold is comptroller.

Uncertain, employees called the Audubon Society, which supplied a "chick-a-boom," a rig used to put tumble-down hatchlings back in high places.

"I kind of got adopted into taking care of the little boogers," Griswold said.

Now he patrols the ground around two Global Stone buildings three or four times daily, checking for the fallen.

Using the chick-a-boom, a 30-foot pole with an orange juice or milk carton attached, he rescues lost babies.

"We send them back on the roof to their moms," Griswold said.

Global Stone is among several businesses working alongside wildlife officials, the Audubon Society, local governments and citizen volunteers to help least terns, a threatened species whose natural beach habitat gradually has become unliveable because of increased human use.

Across town near Eckerd College, Swan Landing Development's executives have won praise from officials and wildlife guardians for helping the protection effort.

The company is creating a $100-million, 27-acre Boca Ciega Bay waterfront subdivision called Marina Bay, featuring low-rise condominiums and garden homes selling from $500,000 to $3-million.

Part of the site looked like a beach to the terns, which nested there about a month ago.

The birds scratched out 80 to 90 nests, said Beth Forys, an Eckerd professor of biology and environmental science whose students help monitor nesting sites.

In a move bound to cost it money, the company changed its construction schedule pending the terns' departure in a few weeks for Central and South America.

"This is business people making decisions they don't want to make, frankly, in order to comply with the law and benefit wildlife," said Rich Paul, an environmental consultant who is a retired sanctuary manager for Audubon of Florida.

"They were great," said Nancy Douglass, regional nongame wildlife biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. She visited the site on June 2.

"We totally understood and respected what we needed to do, and were happy to do," said Nancy Yazdani, wife of Swan Landing head Reza Yazdani.

Officials estimate Florida has 4,000 to 5,000 pairs of breeding least terns. Perhaps 20 to 25 percent nest in Pinellas County from about April to August or September.

Least terns, 5 to 7 inches tall, look like little white sea gulls wearing black caps. They can live up to 20 years, Forys said.

Normally, they would scrape out a small beach nest. But heavy use by strollers and bathers makes them "very vulnerable on the beach," said Audubon volunteer Monique Abrams, who coordinates the society's least tern preservation program.

White, speckled eggs on white sand mean the nests are virtually invisible.

"People are not aware. They would walk through a colony and wonder why there's an adult just above their heads" protesting, Abrams said.

The terns learned they could scrape nests on graveled roofs, frequently used here starting after World War II.

But those refuges gradually will disappear with the advent of tougher building codes, officials say.

What will happen to the terns?

"We need to figure a way where they can nest on beaches where they belong, or come up with other created, restored areas for them," Forys said.

South Pasadena officials got a grant a few years ago to create a restored area in that city. Public works director Gary Anderson said the city worked with an Audubon volunteer to protect the site from predators such as raccoons and to attract the birds. Audio recordings and decoys were used.

"They created a great beach," Forys said.

Even with protection, a yellow-crowned night heron recently plundered 50 eggs, she said. But two chicks survived and are getting ready to fledge, or grow the feathers needed to fly.

Twenty to 30 rooftop sites exist around the county, including the Joe's Creek site area that includes Global Stone's roofs. Nearby Dairy-Mix, a longstanding business that has produced ice cream mix here since 1948, allows Audubon volunteers to use its roof to monitor the chicks at Global Stone.

Audubon member Lorraine Margeson is the de facto manager of the Joe's Creek sites. As a spinoff, she is organizing a cleanup to take place later this year, in the hope that it will create a better environment for wading birds that use the stream. Joe's Creek stretches from mid St. Petersburg to Cross Bayou.

Paul, the environmental consultant, sees all contributors as part of a preservation network, and he sees business playing a large part.

"The story of the least tern protection effort is not just well-meaning people running around saving cute little birds," Paul said. "This is real conservation. This is the meat and potatoes of conservation, not the dessert."

[Last modified June 19, 2005, 00:38:17]