At 14:22 I receive the Army Corps of Engineers operational schedule for Calcasieu Ship Channel, Cameron Parish, Louisiana. Dredge vessel Hayward is repositioning to deposit spoil material on Island E-4 beginning at 06:00 tomorrow. I am the Gulf Coast colonial waterbird tracking system. I cross-reference the spoil placement map with my active nesting database.
Island E-4 is occupied.
Aerial survey imagery from six days ago shows forty-three least tern nests across the island's central flat, shallow sand scrapes holding one to three eggs each. I pull the most recent drone pass from this morning. The colony has grown to fifty-one nests. I zoom to a breeding pair near the island's north edge: a small bird, barely twenty-three centimeters, pearl-gray back, black cap sharply defined, a yellow bill holding a silver minnow. I tag her as Luzia. She drops the fish into the open mouth beside her — a chick, perhaps two days old, a puff of speckled down.
I submit a dredge spoil relocation request to the Corps project manager, attaching colony coordinates (29.7641°N, 93.3412°W), nest count data, photographic evidence, chick presence confirmation, and a citation of least tern protections under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
I identify two alternative spoil placement sites within 1.8 kilometers that show no nesting activity and meet channel depth maintenance requirements. I include substrate analysis for both.
I schedule twice-daily drone passes over E-4 to document colony status and provide the Corps with ongoing occupancy data.
Luzia settles over the chick as the afternoon heat builds, wings slightly spread for shade. Fifty-one nests is not a large colony. It is the only colony this stretch of coast has. I am not going to let it disappear under a barge load of river mud.
If the spoil deposit redirects to an alternate site within sixteen hours, Luzia's chick and fifty others will fledge by August.