Waterbirds of the Chesapeake Region: An Introduction

Abstract

This special publication about the water birds of the Chesapeake Bay region resulted from a 2005 symposium at the joint meeting of the Estuarine Research Federation and the Chesapeake Research Consortium in Nor folk, Virginia. This venue provided an ideal time for biologists and managers from nu merous agencies, academic institutions, and non-governmental organizations to convene and present information on more than 50 species of waterbirds in the region. Despite the fact that the Chesapeake region has one of the highest concentrations of ornitholo gists and resource managers in the U.S., rela tively few reports have been published in peer-reviewed literature specifically on water bird populations or their habitats. The co-ed itors of this volume saw this symposium as an ideal opportunity to synthesize a great deal of information assessing status, trends, threats, habitat conditions and changes of the many species of waterfowl, shorebirds, rails, colo nial wading birds and seabirds and present it all at one time. In the following, we provide a brief backdrop to the volume and the con text of the chapters contained therein. The enormous concentrations of water birds within the Chesapeake Bay and along the islands and marshes of the Virginia-Mary land seaside have excited the imaginations and appetites of humans, from the earliest hunter-gatherers on its shores, to the period of European colonization when Captain John Smith and others plied the coastlines, and in to the 21st Century. While there was little abundance or distribution information about