Return of the Piping Plovers

An adult piping plover in breeding plumage.

Piping plovers are small, plump, sand-colored shore birds. They live and nest on sandy beaches, splitting their time between the south Atlantic and Gulf coasts in the winter and the north Atlantic coast, Great Plains, and Great Lakes in the summer.

This will be my second summer monitoring them.

Last summer I had a six month internship at Fire Island National Seashore in New York. I’d never heard of piping plovers before applying for the internship, much less seen one. My first impression of a real, live piping plover was that it was very small and very silly. I found the way they dashed about on their long, orange legs to be especially amusing.

This year I have a three month internship for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Rhode Island. The plovers are familiar to me now and look, well, very plover like – exactly how they should. The only surprise my first glimpse of a piping plover provided was the sudden realization that I missed them.

Not piping plovers.

Last summer I struggled to learn the difference between a piping plover, a sanderling, a killdeer, a ruddy turnstone, and a semipalmated plover. I assembled a careful list of traits – sanderlings have a long bill, killdeer have two neck rings, ruddy turnstones have a white diamond on their back, semipalmated plovers are too dark – that I ran through as I stared at birds through binoculars. Always the most important question: is it a piping plover? This year I know the birds well enough that I don’t have to raise my binoculars to tell if that bird way down the beach is a piping plover or not. The color, the size, the way they move, the part of the beach they’re on… I know these birds. I know their behavior, their tracks, their nests, and their chicks.

A piping plover scrape with one egg.

Last year the first thing I learned about piping plovers was, “Expect the unexpected.” I also learned that plovers like to build their nests, called “scrapes,” in a sandy open area, perhaps among sparse dune grass on or behind a dune. This year I learned that plovers are willing to bend that rule, given the opportunity. Hurricane Sandy did just that, flattening dunes and sending sand further back than before, even among the coniferous trees that line the dunes on some of the beaches. The plovers are nesting in all kinds of strange locations, including under knee high coniferous trees, under dune overhangs, and among dangling, tangled tree roots. In some areas they’re even nesting next to the sand roads that meander behind the dunes.

Last summer I monitored the piping plovers from a distance, watching each pair with binoculars for 20-30 minutes at a time. I was primarily interested in the plovers’ behavior and whether they were digging scrapes, courting, or incubating a nest. I only ever wandered through the roped off, protected areas to check how many eggs (if any) were in a scrape. Only twelve pairs of birds nested on the entire island, so the other intern and I could afford the time it took to observe the birds.

An adult piping plover feigning a broken wing.

That isn’t the case in Rhode Island. The US Fish and Wildlife Service is responsible for monitoring thirteen different beaches and last year there were seventy seven pairs of nesting piping plovers. Although there is a larger crew of people, the large area that needs to be covered demands a different style of surveying. Now I meander through the protected areas, trying to simultaneously watch each step and scan the ground ahead for tracks and scrapes. I watch for plovers too, but I rely on their tracks more than their behavior.  I try to balance speed with efficiency so that I can minimize disturbance to the birds while still finding nests. And in the end I still use the plovers as my guide. I can tell when they’re trying to lure me away from a certain area – so I walk away from them, to where they don’t want to me to go. I can tell by how distressed they are (ignoring me, calling softly from a distance, calling loudly from nearby, flopping on the ground and feigning a broken wing, flopping on the ground and feigning two broken wings while calling piteously) whether they have a nest nearby and how close it is – although personalities vary and some plovers are more protective than others. I feel terrible each time I disturb the birds and minimize it as much as I can. My favorite nests are the ones that have already been found; I can check to see if the birds are incubating with binoculars and give the nest a wide berth while walking past.

The first nests are due to hatch this week. Soon enough there will be awkward, downy chicks roaming the beach. 

Farewell Plovers

The last piping plovers in the Wilderness fledged today. Three piping plover families with chicks remain, but they’re all in the communities: Lighthouse Beach, Point O’Woods and Water Island.

The first piping plover of the season arrived at Fire Island on March 9 and I arrived shortly thereafter, on March 25. Migratory bird and summer intern, we both made a long journey to come here: the plovers came from their wintering grounds on the south Atlantic and Gulf coasts and I came from the Midwest. Of the two, the piping plovers’ journey is the more impressive, for they are tiny, potbellied birds, smaller than a robin. Shore birds, they live on sandy beaches and rely on their overlong legs to get around, only resorting to flight for long distances and speedy escapes.

We fenced off miles of the upper beach in areas where the plovers like to nest and we waited. The male in each plover pair shoved his chest in the sand to dig shallow “scrapes,” or small hollows in the sand where plovers lay their eggs. Each male dug multiple scrapes, scattered here and there, that the females tested before deciding which one to use. “Not this one, honey, I don’t like the view.”

Plovers lay four eggs, one every other day. Each egg is the size of a grape, sand colored and speckled with black. Camouflage is a plover’s first line of defense, and they do it well, but the foxes have as much experience hunting as the plovers do at hiding. That’s why we add a second line of defense: a 30 foot metal wire exclosure around each nest. The exclosures keep foxes, crows, hawks, feral cats, and other predators away from the nests, but have big enough holes to let the plovers run in and out the bottom.

Piping plover eggs hatch twenty eight days after the last one was laid. The chicks are precocious, like ducks and chickens, and within a few hours of hatching they’re up and running around the beach, searching for insects, worms, and small crustaceans to eat. They’re born with oversized runner’s legs and a round, downy body perched on top. The chicks are clumsy at first and trip when they run, but soon gain poise and confidence.

Growing quickly, by two to three weeks of age the chicks tower over their younger brethren. They’ve exchanged their fuzzy down for sleek feathers and some of the stronger ones begin to test their wings, stretching them above their heads or flapping them while they run.

At the age of 25 to 35 days, the chicks fledge and learn to fly. Full grown, the fledglings are the same size as their parents and the only way to tell them apart is that the fledglings have black bills rather than orange.

The last days of July are running through my fingers and I feel like summer is ending, even if it’s hardly begun. My schedule has become the plover’s schedule and they’re leaving me now, growing up and flying south. They’ll return in the spring, I know, but I’ll have moved on. The plovers are leaving and soon I will follow. 

The Osprey and the Plovers

We (Rafael Cruz, Jennifer Popham and I) were driving a Polaris, a type of small UTV, when we first saw the osprey. It rested at the base of the dunes, eating a fish. We maintained our course and the osprey flew away as we approached. I was excited to see my first Fire Island osprey, but our priority was to monitor piping plovers, so I didn’t assign any particular significance to the sighting.

My attitude changed when I saw the osprey perching on the predator exclosure for nest 4A.

Piping plovers are protected by the Endangered Species act. One of the measures taken to protect plovers at Fire Island is erecting predator exclosures around nests to prevent cats, foxes, raccoons and other predators from eating or damaging the eggs. The predator exclosures are made out of wire mesh and have holes big enough to admit a piping plover, but small enough to keep out predators. The exclosures also have mesh netting stretched across the top to keep out avian predators.

The osprey meant no harm; the exclosure struck it as little more than an ideal place to perch and eat its fish. Maybe keep an eye out for that pesky Polaris that kept chasing it down the beach.

The plovers saw it differently. Neither bird was incubating the nest; both were too busy running around outside the exclosure, trying to attract the osprey’s attention and lure it away. One of the most common ways plovers lure predators away from their nests is by pretending they’ve broken a wing, marking them as easy prey. They’ll stay just ahead of any predator that chases them, ending the ruse and flying away once they’re far enough from the nest. One of the two plovers at nest 4A decided to take the extreme approach to this technique, spreading both wings and flopping on the ground like a small child having a fit.

Rafael and I approached the exclosure to scare away the osprey and it flew away once we were close enough, fish and all. We retreated and one of the plovers returned to the nest to resume incubation.

The osprey hadn’t flown far, no more than 50 meters down the beach, and the other plover still wasn’t satisfied. It is one of the boldest plovers I have ever encountered, for even though it was smaller than the fish the osprey was eating, let alone the osprey itself, the plover passed a few feet in front of the osprey before sitting down, pretending to incubate a nonexistent nest. The plover did this multiple times. Ospreys only eat fish  and this osprey showed no interest in the pipsqueak plover that passed it by – but how was the plover to know that? It was a brave little bird, but after a little while it gave up the ruse and returned to the nest. We scared the osprey away one last time, just to be sure, for there are many places on the beach that are good for eating fish, but each and every plover nest is precious.