If you've lived in Stone Harbor long enough, you've probably stopped seeing the Bird Sanctuary. It's the greenish blur you pass on Third Avenue between 114th and 117th Streets on the way to somewhere else, the reason that one stretch of the island never got built out, the place you took your kids for a school field trip a decade ago and haven't thought about since. That's the trap. The Sanctuary you're picturing, the one with the wall of reeds crowding the road, is not the Sanctuary that's actually there right now.
For years, anyone walking or driving past that stretch of Third Avenue saw a solid stand of common reed standing roughly 12 feet tall, choking out the freshwater marsh behind it. That reed, Phragmites australis, isn't native. It doesn't belong there any more than an invasive vine belongs on a historic facade, and the Borough of Stone Harbor and The Wetlands Institute spent several years working to change that. What's growing along that stretch today looks different because it is different, and this is the exact month to go see it for yourself.
What Actually Changed, and When
The Sanctuary itself has a longer history than most people realize. It started as a heron rookery around 1938, got formal protection by local ordinance in 1947, and in October 1965 became the first site in New Jersey to earn National Natural Landmark status. By 1964, more than 5,000 birds were arriving each nesting season, staying from March through December. Then, starting around 1995, the nesting shorebirds began disappearing. By 2000, they were essentially gone.
The Borough answered with a rejuvenation project in 2005. Heron Overlook opened in 2008, the first time in sixty years visitors could actually get inside the Sanctuary rather than just look at it from the street. That same summer, crews replaced the berm separating the freshwater meadow from the saltwater meadow to create what's now called Meadow View. By February 2009, Holly Path was finished, a pipe swap improved tidal flow, and clogged tributaries were reopened. The fully restored Sanctuary welcomed residents back in June 2009.
That fix didn't hold forever. Phragmites and purple loosestrife crept back into the wetlands and transition areas over the following years, and by the time the Borough and the Institute launched a second effort, the Stone Harbor Bird Sanctuary Habitat Restoration Project, that reed stand along Third Avenue had grown back to a solid 12 feet. The Wetlands Institute managed the science and Princeton Hydro LLC handled the physical work. In the fall of 2021, licensed applicators treated the wetlands with a low-toxicity herbicide called Habitat, applied by Marsh Master, hose, or backpack sprayer depending on the terrain, all under a New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection permit. The Sanctuary closed for about five days that September while the work happened.
By two years after that treatment, the marsh behind that stretch of Third Avenue had gone from a monoculture of reed to a plant community that supports far more life than it did before. Purple loosestrife has already started showing up again in a few spots since then, most likely from seeds blown in from backyard gardens rather than from anything left behind by the treatment itself, which is a reminder that this kind of restoration is never a one-time fix. It's a maintenance project the Borough and the Institute are still running today.
The Four Trails, and What's Moving Through Them Right Now
The Sanctuary is small, about 21 acres, but it's broken into distinct paths that each show you a different piece of the ecosystem. September and October happen to be the best weeks of the year to walk all four, because this is peak southbound migration for the birds, dragonflies, and butterflies that use the Sanctuary as a stopover on their way south.
| Path | Entrance | What to look for this month |
|---|---|---|
| Egret Espy Path | 2nd Avenue and 114th Street | A footbridge dedicated to longtime resident George Walters leads into maritime forest that's hundreds of years old, with white spruce remnants and Eastern Box Turtles underfoot. Migrating songbirds and Green Herons pass through here in fall. |
| Heron Overlook | Off 3rd Avenue | An open view of the saltwater wetlands where herons and egrets feed. The path was built with support from Julian and Betsy Miraglia and Phil Barber and Tony Millcarsky. |
| Meadow Walk | Between Egret Espy and Holly Path | Freshwater meadow on one side, saltwater marsh on the other, ending at Paul's Pond, a spring-fed freshwater pond where Glossy Ibis, Black-crowned and Yellow-crowned Night Herons, Green Herons, and Osprey roost. Ducks start showing up on the freshwater side in fall. |
| Holly Path | Off 2nd Avenue | Historically closed in summer to protect nesting Black-crowned Night Herons, it's now open year-round, though visitors are asked to stay quiet and stick to the trail between March and October. |
Monarch butterflies are also moving through the Sanctuary right now. The gardens along 3rd Avenue were specifically replanted with nectar sources to support them, because their migration through Stone Harbor runs from August into October. Layer that on top of the songbirds, warblers, raptors, and wading birds already funneling south through the maritime forest and successional meadow near Egret Espy, and you get a Sanctuary that's noticeably busier in late September than it will be by Thanksgiving, when the wintering songbirds, the sparrows, robins, thrushes, and woodpeckers, settle in for the colder months instead.
If you want a second fall birding stop on the same afternoon, Cape May Bird Observatory naturalists periodically lead small, preregistration-only walks around Stone Harbor Point, at the opposite end of town from the Sanctuary. Worth checking their current schedule before you go, since group size and timing are limited.
Why This Is Worth Your Attention Now
None of this is a reason to buy or sell anything. It's a reason to actually walk the Sanctuary again before the season turns, because the version you remember from a few summers back, the one crowded by reed along Third Avenue, isn't accurate anymore. The Borough and The Wetlands Institute put real money and permitted, monitored work into changing what's growing back there, and the payoff, a marsh that supports more species than it did before the 2021 treatment, is the kind of thing you only notice if you go look.
Dr. Lenore Tedesco, who has run The Wetlands Institute as executive director since 2011, has written about this restoration work for the local paper, and her framing is straightforward: a walk on the Sanctuary trails is a break from the busier parts of the island, all year, not just in summer. That's true in any season, but it's especially true right now, with the marsh mid-transformation and migration at its peak. The Institute itself sits at 1075 Stone Harbor Boulevard, right at the entrance to town, and stays open through the fall and winter for self-guided visits on weekends if you want to pair the Sanctuary walk with a stop at the aquarium or the salt marsh trail on the same day.
Stone Harbor changes in small, deliberate ways most of the time, a pipe swapped here, a path rerouted there, and most of those changes go unnoticed by people who already live here because there's no reason to look twice at something you walk past every week. This is one of those changes worth a second look. Go before the reed grows back.
If you're weighing a move within Stone Harbor or Avalon and want a local's read on a specific block, Joseph Butler has spent 23 years selling real estate on Seven Mile Island and 30 years living on it year-round. Let's Connect if you ever want to talk through what a particular street, or a particular season, actually looks like on the ground.
