Movement data for the Colony Island Network Design and Implementation (CINDI) project to recover waterbirds in the Gulf of Mexico: black skimmer (Rhynchops niger), 2019-2023

The Texas coast supports 130,000 waterbirds annually on a network of colony islands from Galveston to the mouth of the Rio Grande. Each year, millions of dollars are spent by organizations and agencies to create, manage, and restore colony islands on the Texas coast, but without guidance on which islands provide the greatest benefit to birds, funds and management effort may not be as effective as possible. Stakeholders and land managers need a tool to guide decisions on which islands to restore. To this end, we collected telemetry data for 20 black skimmers (Rhynchops niger) between 2019 to 2023 by fitting solar GPS-GSM tracking devices (model OrniTrack 9, 10, or 15, Ornitela, UAB) that constitute < 2% of a bird’s body mass. Movement data enables us to 1) delineate foraging ranges around colonies, 2) estimate relative numbers of nests each bay system can support, and 3) estimate the probability of use for different habitats within their foraging ranges. These data will ultimately become one of many inputs to support a GIS-based model that prioritizes colony islands for management and rehabilitation on the Texas coast based on their greatest potential for birds.

The suite of related datasets include tracking for black skimmers (2019-2023: HI.x960.000:0003, https://doi.org/10.7266/7kxf3hqd, Caspian tern (2022-2023: HI.x960.000:0004, https://doi.org/10.7266/gqtgaw3g; 2024: HI.x960.000:0008, https://doi.org/10.7266/jvpaa0ys), tricolored heron (2023: HI.x960.000:0005, https://doi.org/10.7266/3y4qnaax; 2024: HI.x960.000:0006, https://doi.org/10.7266/pr3pj20d), and great egrets (2023: HI.x960.000:0002, https://doi.org/10.7266/manamsa7; 2024: HI.x960.000:0009, https://doi.org/10.7266/8gpn11g2).