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Audubon, Partners Install Living Shorelines on River Islands in Time for Nesting Birds
The living shorelines will decrease erosion on Cape Fear River bird nesting islands, but we need your help to protect parents and chicks on the beach.
By Brittany Salmons
Senior Communications Associate
Published March 17, 2026
This article is from Audubon North Carolina
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Audubon just wrapped up installation of test living shoreline projects on Battery and Shellbed Islands on the Lower Cape Fear River thanks to support from many partners, including Cape Fear Audubon and the North Carolina Coastal Federation.
Battery Island and other small islands on the river are slowly disappearing, an alarming trend because of their importance as vital bird nesting areas. Contributing factors to their rapid erosion include wakes from private boats and commercial container ships, natural events like hurricanes and storms, and flooding from king tides and sea-level rise.
Battery Island is home to one of the largest wading bird colonies in North Carolina. That's why we developed test living shoreline projects all aimed at protecting and enhancing valuable bird nesting habitat.
With help from Sandbar Oyster Company, a local business that makes ecofriendly living shorelines, we deployed the Battery Island part of the project in February. Specifically, we installed a biodegradable hardscape composed of plant-fiber cloths and a mineral-based hardening agent on Battery Island.
The structure is submerged at high tide and provides habitat for oyster larvae to settle onto and grow into reefs. We will monitor how the 70’ test section performs and make plans for future work based on those results.
On nearby Shellbed Island, we installed a different kind of hardscape called “backstops.” Sandbar Oyster Company came up with the design after a field trip with Audubon coastal biologist to view sites that were experiencing habitat degradation. On marsh islands like Shellbed, the loss of historic oyster reefs has led to a lack of supply of old oyster shell to maintain “shell rakes.”
Shell rakes are linear deposits of shell that accumulate along shorelines near oyster resources. Eventually, they are high enough to support nesting birds like oystercatchers. In fact, about half of the Cape Fear River's pairs of oystercatchers nest on rakes.
Over time and with the impacts of hurricanes like Florence and Dorian, Shellbed’s rakes have been flattened out as their shells are strewn backwards into the marsh. Flooding becomes a frequent cause of nest loss at degraded rakes, and they can no longer help buffer the marsh shoreline from additional erosion. So, we installed Sandbar’s “backstops” along the rear edge of the shell rakes to catch the shell and keep it in the same general area, while still allowing for change in response to storms.
“This novel technique has never been trialed before, so we are anxious to see how they work,” said Coastal Biologist Lindsay Addison.
These projects are part of a larger effort to protect nesting islands on the river. In fact, we're currently wrapping up a shoreline protection plan for Battery Island, with support from the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, which will further enhance our ability to protect the site. And, we are planning to implement the placement of new loose shell on some of the shell rakes through a grant awarded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
All this was done just in time for the nesting season.
Share the Shore
While we manage and protect bird nesting sites year-round, we need your help to keep them safe and thriving. Least Terns, Common Terns, Black Skimmers, Piping Plovers, and American Oystercatchers are some of the many colorful waterbirds that share our beaches with us. Many of them nest on open, bare sand often near inlets or sandy patches within marsh systems.
Their nests are small, shallow, unprotected depressions scraped directly into the sand. Casual observers can easily overlook the eggs because they are camouflaged in the sand. When people or pets get too close, the adults flush away from eggs and chicks leaving them vulnerable to temperature stress and other threats. That’s why we rope off areas of the beach each year, to protect nesting birds and chicks as they grow.
From March 1 to September 15, Audubon maintains bird nesting sanctuary postings at the South End of Wrightsville Beach, Lea-Hutaff Island, and a handful of islands on the lower Cape Fear River. Dozens of other partner sites up and down the coast do the same.
But birds don’t always stay within the postings and may wander closer to the shore to forage for food or get a drink of water. And, not every bird nesting site is posted. It only takes minutes for eggs to overheat or chicks to suffer a lethal mishap without the parent birds’ care, so it’s important to respect posted areas and also be alert wherever you are on the coast. Giving birds plenty of space can make all the difference to their success or failure.
If you're at the beach between March and September during waterbird nesting season, be on the lookout for the following bird behaviors or marked off areas that indicate that birds are nesting nearby.
- Adult birds standing or sitting on the beach strand or near dunes
- Adults engaged in courtship displays, broken wing or injury displays
- Adult birds calling or dive-bombing people or pets
- Adult terns or skimmers carrying fish
- Nests or nest scrapes
- Eggs or chicks
- Signs marking off a bird nesting area, typically wood signposts with or without string between them
When you see these behaviors, please move away from the area so the parents can continue to take care of their eggs and chicks. Be a good egg and share the shore this spring and summer.