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The former site of a mobile home park is now the future home of Nanticoke Crossing Park, both a conservation effort and one of few opportunities for public recreation along the Nanticoke River.
The 64-mile river once explored by Captain John Smith remains a sleeping giant. While eastern Sussex County is known for its variety of outdoor activities and sprawling state parks, to the west, the Nanticoke is a virtually untapped eco-tourism asset.
The river is the most pristine tributary of the Chesapeake Bay and features the highest rate of biodiversity in the watershed, according to Chesapeake Conservancy President and CEO Joel Dunn.
Credit: Don Manalo.
Red knots and sanderlings in flight; horseshoe crabs on beach
The quiet, empty beaches of South Jersey’s Delaware Bay shoreline will soon begin to stir with the sound of thousands of migrating shorebirds, pausing their long journeys from the Southern Hemisphere to the Canadian Arctic to refuel on the eggs of horseshoe crabs that emerge to spawn here each spring.
Along with this natural wonder comes a dedicated group of volunteers, called Shorebird Stewards, who assist biologists from the state and nonprofit organizations in their annual count of the bay’s most vulnerable migratory shorebirds, including the dunlin, sanderling, semipalmated sandpiper, short-billed dowitcher, ruddy turnstone and the red knot, a federally listed threatened species.
39375 Inlet Road
Rehoboth Beach Delaware 19971United States
The Center for the Inland Bays is looking for volunteers to help the organization conduct its very first osprey count.
Nivette Perez-Perez, CIB project manager and volunteer coordinator, said the last aerial survey, conducted by the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife in 2014, showed 92 nesting pairs in the Inland Bays watershed.
This survey is expected to explore a wider range of areas around the Inland Bays, said Perez-Perez in an email Feb. 23. There are expected to be quite a few more nests in 2021 due to the addition of man-made nesting platforms and anecdotal successful fledgling counts reported by volunteer monitors since that 2014 survey, she said.