Wildlife & Plants

Silver Sands sits inside a documented eBird hotspot with 164 species recorded since 2005 across more than 370 checklists, most of it shorebirds working the ground between the lagoon and the open shore. To protect nesting activity, we don't publish specific locations. During nesting season, keep a respectful distance from any bird showing agitation and stay off vegetated dune areas entirely.

Late summer into fall is peak shorebird passage here, mostly juveniles moving through rather than adults defending a nest, which is part of why they're comfortable feeding close to people. Yellowlegs are one of the most reliable sightings, working the shallow water at the lagoon's edge; the bright yellow-orange legs are the field mark, and voice settles which species it is when bill length is hard to judge (a Lesser Yellowlegs gives one or two flat notes, a Greater gives a longer ringing series).

Small sandpipers and plovers move through the same window, and they're easy to tell apart at a glance. Plovers are stubby-billed, big-eyed, and move in a run-stop-peck pattern; sandpipers are longer-billed and longer-legged, walking steadily as they probe the sand. A Semipalmated Sandpiper weighs about 30 grams, roughly four Canadian toonies, and some individuals nearly double that before a nonstop migratory flight of more than 3,000 km to South America.

The forest above the shore transitions into coastal scrub and dune grasses closer to the water, and each layer of that transition is doing structural work, not just filling in the view.

Beach pea grows lower, closer to the wrack line, and does different work. Its root system helps anchor loose sand, and nodules on those roots host nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which is what lets the plant survive in soil this poor while slowly enriching it for whatever grows in after it. A 2024 University of New Brunswick study found roughly 30 different bacterial species living in beach pea roots on Atlantic Canada dunes.

Bayberry in the scrub layer feeds more than it looks like it should. Its waxy berries carry a coating most songbirds can't digest, but Yellow-rumped Warblers can, which is one reason that species winters farther north than almost any other warbler. It's a small example of how the plant life and the bird life on this shore are the same story told twice.

Staying on marked trails protects all of it. A single set of footprints through dune grass can kill the plant and open a gap the wind turns into a blowout within a season.