Little Galloo "Bird Island"

High water and bird nesting impacts pondered

Little Galloo in 2016 many birds present then

Little Galloo Island is approximately five miles from the New York mainland, and seven miles southeast of the international boundary with Canada. It is one of a group of four islands and lies just east of privately owned Galloo Island, and is a short distance west of Stony Island. It’s small at forty acres and low lying. According to Wikipedia, most of the island is covered by herbaceous vegetation, with a few trees located primarily around the perimeter. Historically, it was home to one of the largest ring bill gull nesting colonies in North America. It also hosted night herons, cattle egrets, lots of Caspian and common terns and some herring gulls. The vegetation cover has changed since the Wikipedia’s post.

The birds that nest here exploit abundant small fish to feed their young as the ledges and rocky shoals provide good spawning habitat for bass, perch, and other fishes. The uninhabited island was donated by Phillips Petroleum to NY State and it is now a "wildlife management area", under DEC management. In the late 90s Little Galloo made the headlines when a group of anglers who thought the ugly black cormorants were eating too many small mouth bass came over to the island and shot up the colony and smashed some chicks and eggs. The bird population soon rebounded.

this photo shows buildings around “Gill Harbor” on Galloo in the background where we briefly stopped in during 2022 cruise. This year very few gulls and almost no cormorants were seen fishing the waters around Little Galloo.

In my first photo taken in 2016 the forested land in the background is that of Galloo Island. A big wind farm was proposed for the island a few years ago, but recently Galloo was purchased by the Florida based owner who has stated plans to keep it agricultural.

We visited Galloo’s small harbor briefly last summer. The island ‘security’ sent a drone over to check us out and between the unfriendly vibes and the if-fy holding in the exposed anchorage, we decided not to stay for the night. We went off to better shelter at Dutch John Bay on Stony. But as we sailed by we were struck by the lack of birds on Little Galloo compared to 2016. High water in 2017 and 2019 looks to have pretty well swept the island down to bare rock. The bird population has yet to recover to pre- high water numbers. It would be interesting to know where they all relocated to. (We did see a family of night herons on Main Duck in 2022 and a large group of cormorants were hanging out at the south eastern tip of Main Duck this past summer. I don’t know if they were nesting there but they are doing very well off by the Lighthouse and also on the south shore at Blind Sodus Bay). Presumably the 2019 production of young birds on Little Galloo was hit pretty hard by high water.

If anyone reading this knows of studies monitoring bird recovery, I’d sure be interested in an update. Not so great photo below shows nests in trees next to Main Duck Lighthouse. Five years ago I knew of no nests on Main Duck.