Nature Note #144: The T'wa Plovers

Memorial Day weekend has come and gone and I thought I'd share a quick update about some of my findings over the past week. I wanted to talk about plovers in particular. Why you might ask? One reason is that they are ridiculously adorable. Another is that they are wonderfully talkative with their piping voices. Despite their notoriety and popularity with birders, shorebirds in particular are vulnerable to declines in population due to sharp declines in suitable migration stopover sites, food depletion, and in some cases, illegal hunting on their wintering grounds. Fortunately for us, many shorebirds species are still very common and the two birds I want to talk about in this posting are probably some of the more recognizable of the shorebirds (depending on where you live). They are the Killdeer (Charadrius vociferus) and the Piping Plover (C. melodus).

I've talked about Piping Plovers on here before, but I don't think I've ever specifically focused on either my own observations of them or general facts about their life history, food habits, threats to their survival etc. Hopefully, I can shed some light on those today. 

After work today (soon to be yesterday due to the lateness of this posting), I decided to get out of the apartment and leave the city for a bit to explore the open fields and woods of the Three Rivers State Game Lands in Baldwinsville. I'd visited beforehand in order to secure some year birds for my list and that previous trip was extremely successful. This trip was no different as I heard singing Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus) and Yellow-billed Cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus), as well as a flyby Green Heron (Butorides virescens). 

As I headed up the road, I pulled into a gravel parking lot to survey a recently felled section of forest. The sign showed a map of the felled area and explained how it was being used for habitat renewal. I pondered whether it would be good habitat for Eastern Whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferus), but as I did so, the sharp panicked cry of an adult Killdeer cried out next to me. I looked up to see an adult crouching on the ground about 10 to 15 feet away from my car. It looked like it was performing a broken wing display. I knew better having seen it fly in to "distract" me, but the purpose of the display is to draw potential egg thieves far enough away from the nest in order to protect their babies. 

Broken wing display

This strategy seems to work well on single predators, but might be less successful against ones in groups  (this is purely speculation on my part, but I'd be curious to find that out what a single predator's success rate is vs. a group).

Killdeer

Killdeer are easily recognized by the double rings around their upper belly, brown backs, orange rumps, and white bellies. They are about the size of a robin and move in a jerky and nervous manner. Their ringing cries are meant to signal each other when they spot danger or when defending territory boundaries and the nagging shrillness of the calls makes them live up to their species epithet, vociferus. They nest on the ground with a preference for bare or pebbly soil, and are even known to nest on gravel rooftops in cities and towns! Their eggs are camouflaged with speckles and blend in with the rocks allowing the parents some comfort that their eggs will be difficult to spot. However, this sometimes puts them in conflict with humans. I remember years ago, during a stint in Little League Baseball, that baseball diamonds and fields in general attracted Killdeer fairly frequently. As a result, I was happy to watch them putter about the fields while my coach tried in vain to inspire me to improve any aspect of my game. Eventually, it became clear to my parents that I was not destined for the majors after I spent the majority of one game, in the outfield, watching a crow sitting in a nearby maple. 

Cut to this past Memorial Day and I was visiting a local beach in Massachusetts with my girlfriend to check on how the plovers were doing. Being beach nesting birds like the plovers and their irate neighbours, the Least Terns (Sternula antillarum) begin to nest on the beach, they are protected both by law and with rope fencing that serves as a boundary to keep people out of the upper dunes where the birds incubate their eggs. This doesn't always work as some people feel that the birds are a nuisance and take up too much of "their" private section of beach. The best one can do is educate the public about their presence and get them to realize that the beach is a haven for certain types of wildlife that need it for their survival. Fortunately, the birds on this beach are left alone by beach-goers and the fence line is respected and left alone. 

Least Tern

Piping Plover

The plovers themselves are possibly the most adorable birds on the beach. Their pleasant piping voices carry a fair distance over the dry sands of the upper dunes and beach, while their small size allows them to be seen as a charismatic species by many beach visitors. The backs of the adults even match the color of the dry sand allowing them to camouflage into their sandy environments. Other field marks include their black neck-rings, orange beaks and legs, and white bellies. The Semipalmated Plover (C. semipalmatus) is a similar looking species with similar markings, but their backs are the color of wet sand or light soil. They also tend to be passage migrants and nest in the high Arctic. Both species nest on the ground, with the Piping Plovers being at higher risk of disturbance due to their preference for beaches along the Atlantic coast, as well as inland along several major river systems in the Midwest. It is listed as both an endangered and threatened species on the United States Fish and Wildlife website. While they are still in trouble, increased awareness and appreciation for these birds should allow them to thrive even as huge numbers of people flock to the beaches each summer. Luckily for any remaining disgruntled beach-goers, the plovers begin to migrate south in mid to late July, with the majority of birds being gone by August. Like many shorebirds, the summer is a quick season for raising a family and fledging the young. After all, they need to grow up too. 

Fortunately for me (and those of you reading this that live in the Northern Hemisphere), summer is just around the corner! I will be working on sharing information about the different species I find and the new places I'll be visiting so I can orient in my new surroundings. Hopefully, that will happen sooner than later, but at least I'm committed to exploring. Catch you all later!