This article was published in the 50th volume of the NB Naturalist, in June 2026. Read it in full or find out where to order it here.

NB Naturalist Feature: The Point Lepreau Bird Observatory – 30 Years and Still Counting

Point Lepreau Bird Observatory (PLBO) turned 30 in 2025. From the founder of the project himself, learn all about how this Saint John Naturalists Club initiative came to be and why it’s so important for scientific research in this province.

Background
In April of 1995 two birders, David McCurdy and Jim Wilson, stood at the tip of Point Lepreau and watched hundreds of sea ducks – Common Eiders, all three scoter species, Long-tailed Ducks and a number of others, stream past the tip of the Point and continue on their way up the Bay, headed to… somewhere.

In the background an empty oil supertanker loomed high on the horizon on its way from the Irving refinery in Saint John to somewhere else. These disparate travelers, moving in opposite directions on entirely different missions, framed a specter of potential disaster if ever there were an oil spill in the Bay.

The two of us were struck by the fact that no one would have any idea how many birds or what species could be adversely affected or when this spectacular annual migration begins and ends. But clearly a major spill or a series of smaller ones could create a wildlife disaster of significant proportions.

That realization sparked the creation of the Point Lepreau Bird Observatory (PLBO), a project of the Saint John Naturalists’ Club (SJNC), formed in 1995 to count and catalogue the skeins of birds that pass through the Bay of Fundy each spring and fall. The Project recently completed its 30th consecutive year of monitoring sea duck and seabird migration.

What began as a simple effort to anticipate an oil spill has gradually evolved into a long-term data capture project aimed at evaluating the population trends of various waterbird species passing along the East Coast every year. And with it came an understanding of why so many birds are observed from the tip of Point Lepreau each spring.

Strategic Location
Point Lepreau is best known to the public as the site of Atlantic Canada’s only nuclear generating facility, owned and operated by NB Power at the base of the Point since the early 1980s. But the location offers much more as it’s the most prominent finger of land along New Brunswick’s mainland coast, protruding over three kilometers into the Bay, and providing a unique geographical location to observe marine activity.

Millions of waterbirds spend their winter months at sea within sight of land and spread out along a vast ribbon of ocean stretching from Maine to Florida and the Gulf Coast and a large proportion of them breed in remote areas of the Eastern Arctic each summer. As the days of spring lengthen these birds begin to move north in flocks, following the Eastern Seaboard until many of them near the yawning mouth of the Bay of Fundy which appears to act as a giant funnel as the birds continue their journey.

Migrating waterbirds tend to fly relatively close to the water surface and focus their trajectory toward the next headland ahead. So Point Lepreau, projecting prominently, tends to attract northbound migrants that make a beeline for its tip, then adjust their flight path toward the next promontory. It’s theoretically possible that the majority of Eastern North America’s wintering sea ducks and seabirds fly relatively close to the tip of Point Lepreau and the Point Lepreau Bird Observatory on their way to more northerly nesting areas.

Critical Partners
Creating and operating a bird observatory adjacent a nuclear generating station is not easy. It has required a high degree of cooperation and coordination with two critical partners.

NB Power owns most of the Point’s land mass and appropriately, must adhere to strict security protocols at all times. Therefore each PLBO volunteer is rigorously screened before being granted access and permission to be on the site. Security officials at NB Power have granted security clearance to more than 300 volunteers over the 30-year life of the project, although volunteer annual involvement averages 30-40 individuals. The project could never have evolved successfully without the initial and continued strong support of NB Power’s nuclear management team.

Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) owns the land at the tip of the Point where its lighthouses have stood since the 1830s. DFO has granted a license to the Saint John Naturalists’ Club to have its observatory building located there on an ongoing basis, a second essential component of the project’s success.

Financial and Other Support
Annual funding support, accessed through grants from the Canadian Wildlife Service and a variety of other sources (NB Wildlife Trust Fund, NB Environmental Trust Fund, Ducks Unlimited Canada, Baillie Fund, Sea Duck Joint Venture and Nature Canada) has enabled the project to contract up to two Official Counters to lead daily spring migration counts since 1999. There is one four-hour count each morning and a similar count each afternoon. Each Official Counter can be assisted by up to three volunteers.

Methodology and Numbers
Over the past 30 years the Point Lepreau Observatory project has amassed a significant database of spring migration data that is now published online by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) through its open data portal, providing important research information for use by scientists and other interested parties, worldwide. The PLBO migration counting protocol (Hussell and Ralph, 1998), used since the beginning of the project, was provided through a collaboration with Birds Canada and the Canadian Wildlife Service. The protocol is designed to measure trends in species’ populations, but not to estimate those populations.

The protocol for a four-hour migration count is 15 minutes of counting and identifying birds by species, followed by a rest period of 15 minutes. This is repeated seven times during a four-hour count, resulting in two hours of actual counting each morning and again each afternoon on most days. A few high-volume days have recorded bird passage at more than 8,000 an hour which is exceptional, but total birds counted over the life of the project is approaching 1,700,000! Imagine the total volume of bird life that must pass each spring.
Southward migration through the Bay of Fundy in fall is barely a trickle compared to that in spring.

It’s believed this is because the adult birds and their young are scattered across the vastness of the Eastern Arctic and make their autumn flights to the East Coast directly without the funneling effect seen in spring. Despite this, a few migration counts are done by volunteers each fall to collect data that can be compared with the spring.

Project Significance
New Brunswick is incredibly fortunate to have this ideal geographic location for monitoring marine bird migration with the support of its two landowners. Point Lepreau is situated north of the wintering area and south of the summer breeding region of most of these birds and their annual spring migration brings them right past the observatory’s doorstep. It’s now generally recognized that a migration monitoring strategy that adheres to consistent count methods, uses consistent counters and conducts counts from the same strategic geographical location over an extended period, is the most cost-effective way to gather research-quality information on sea ducks and seabirds that’s impossible to acquire otherwise. This makes the Point Lepreau project an extremely valuable citizen science effort that we hope will continue for many decades to come.