Based on my wildlife jottings, I am reminded that Fishers Island’s Hay Harbor is a destination for a pair of American Oyster Catchers winding down their spring migration.

These past years of documenting local traditional knowledge has me routinely scouting in blustery gusts, where I hide in tall reeds trying to still my camera and record this summer resident bird’s earlier return.

Site fidelity is something I first heard of and learned about in the Pribilof Islands. By early summer, I was routinely hunkered in tundra grass, placing a check mark in data sheet columns as tagged female Northern fur seals completed their arduous journeys across the Bering Sea. Amidst the roaring waves, hundreds of glistening brown and expectant mother “sea bears” coasted gracefully, then waddled clumsily to shore. Within hours, they “pupped”; each delivery adding a precious family member to a declining species.

It has been researched and scientifically noted that female pups born of that seal species will be faithful to the same site — that same craggy rookery, returning in future years to bear their own young.

Back here on Fishers Island, I read a bit about philopatry (Greek for “home loving”). It is an ecology term for site fidelity. By returning to the same nesting and feeding territory, American Oyster Catcher populations maintain their species adaptation to specific environs.

I found a bit of humor in reading that the term also can describe nesting animals that don’t remain in their home nests during an “unfavorable” season.

As I see more and more familiar faces journeying across the choppy Sound by ferry to Fishers Island in these early spring days, I think truly, that same site fidelity is often exhibited — loving summer homes and expectant of wonderful family time.

Justine Kibbe is a naturalist for the Fishers Island Conservancy. A lifelong environmentalist, Kibbe spent six years on Alaska’s Island of St. Paul among the native Unungan people to study fur seals. Now a Fishers Island resident, Kibbe offers weekly wildlife snapshots from her observations around the island in “My Neck Of The Woods.” She can be reached at bjkibbe@gmail.com.