FBW and Our Tern take a Hackensack Riverkeeper eco-cruise as Hoboken’s colony of Terns make a comeback
By Lila Jung | June 19, 2025 | Photo credit: Lila Jung
Most Hoboken residents have no idea that a colony of Common Terns—gray-and-white migratory seabirds with black caps—has quietly made a home right in town. Just steps from the popular Pier 13, with its fluorescent picnic tables and busy food trucks, lies the privately owned Pier 11. Each year, this quiet stretch of waterfront becomes a nesting ground for the birds. Runners and waterfront visitors pass by daily, unaware that just a few feet away, these terns are laying eggs not far from Hoboken’s active public waterfront.
A recent boat tour through the Meadowlands, led by Captain Hugh Carola of Hackensack Riverkeeper, offered a clear snapshot of the area’s ecological recovery. The eco-cruise attended by representatives from the Fund for a Better Waterfront and the bird conservation group Our Tern, highlighted the important role the Meadowlands plays as a habitat, and nesting ground for over 200 bird species. Despite its reputation for housing old industrial development, the wetlands show signs of resilience.
The boat traveled under several bridges and anonymous overpasses which at first glance seem abandoned, but upon further inspection are populated by birds. Their nests are jammed into beams, and sit atop the guts of old infrastructure. Ospreys balance on signs, and herons do their perfect slo-mo take off, flying over the water like they’re above it all. Every forgotten piece of man-made rotted architecture functions as bird condos: bolts and cables and rusted exit signs.
Clapper Rails called from the marshes, and flocks of Barn Swallows swooped low across the water. Double-crested Cormorants perched on pilings, while Terns, both Forster’s and Least, danced above the river’s surface.
The diversity of birdlife is striking. The Meadowlands provide seasonal or year-round habitat for a wide array of species, including waterfowl like Green-winged Teal, American Black Ducks, and Canvasbacks; shorebirds such as Yellowlegs and Semipalmated Plovers; and elusive songbirds like Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrows and Marsh Wrens. Several of these species are considered threatened or endangered in New Jersey, making the Meadowlands a critical site for conservation.
The activity seen in the Meadowlands is relevant to developments in Hoboken, where the terns have returned. These birds were once widespread along the coast of New Jersey, but have been declining in number due to human disturbance. The tern colony, first documented this year by Our Tern on May 4, has grown to include 34 individual birds and 17 active nests.
Our Tern, founded by Juan Melli, Noelle Thurlow and Jeffrey Train, has been monitoring the colony closely. In partnership with FBW, they advocate for protections to ensure the terns are able to complete their breeding cycle undisturbed.
The return of the terms has done more than raise a couple pairs of binoculars. It renewed interest in Hoboken’s natural history. Long before concrete hardened, and millennials roamed the streets with designer puppies, Hoboken was an island surrounded by marshlands, home to hundreds of native animals. The Hoboken Historical Museum’s exhibit, The Hoboken Meadows, feels like a quiet reminder that the city wasn’t built from scratch, but that it was built on top of something.
It’s easy to read an article and understand urban ecology through words, but seeing it in real-time is a jolt that does not feel incidental. And with intention, and protection, these parts of nature that go unnoticed might speak louder. The larger picture, and a boat ride through the Meadowlands, offers a different vision than the grim environmental headlines seen in major news outlets: hope. Terns aren’t just returning to distant wetlands or wildlife refuges; they’re showing up in the shadows of cranes and factories, in places thought of as too developed. They’re adapting to us. The real question now is whether humans can learn to adapt to them.
Lila Jung is a student at Sarah Lawrence College who grew up in Hoboken. She is working as a volunteer this summer for the Fund for a Better Waterfront.