• Summary
• Text account
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• Reference and further resources

Site description (2001 baseline)
Îles de la Couvée is located on the south shore of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the Canal de la Rive Sud, Québec. This site is adjacent to the cities of St. Lambert and Brossard and includes the islands and islets between the Champlain and Victoria bridges.

Four artificial elongate islands ranging in size from 0.36 to 0.94 km2 make up this Important Bird Area. The islands are made of deposit from dredging of the canal. Apart from a few trees (poplars) and sparse herbaceous vegetation composed mainly of Black Mustard on one of the islands, the islands are unvegetated.

Key biodiversity
Huge numbers of Ring-billed Gulls nest on Île de la Couvée #2. This colony has grown in size from 4,000 pairs in 1974 to over 28,000 pairs between 1989 and 1994. The colony then decreased in size so that in 2000 10,751 pairs were present. Thus in recent decades the colony has been equivalent to between 1 and 3% of the global Ring-billed Gull population. Small numbers of Herring Gulls (1994: 8 pairs) also nest on the islands. Common Terns formerly nested at this site (1974: 9 pairs) but are now extirpated.

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Recommended citation
BirdLife International (2024) Important Bird Area factsheet: Île de la Couvée (Canada). Downloaded from https://datazone.birdlife.org/site/factsheet/île-de-la-couvée-iba-canada on 18/12/2024.