Speaking of Nature: Piping Plovers

By BILL DANIELSON

For the Recorder

Published: 07-06-2020 9:02 AM

In 1985, the piping plover (Charadrius melodus) was granted protected status under the Endangered Species Act. To make a very long story short, a species that had thrived along the Atlantic coast of the United States and Canada for hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of years suddenly had to contend with the arrival of a new competitor — Homo sapiens. The birds didn’t stand a chance.

The problem was real estate. Piping plovers evolved to fill the niche of shorebird that included sandy beaches as both feeding and nesting areas. Evolution worked its magic and has molded a bird that is beautifully suited for both. From a feeding perspective the bird is one of the short-beaked probers of wet sand that looks for small marine invertebrates while dodging incoming waves. From a nesting perspective the bird will fashion a shallow scrape in the sand and the female will lay four beautiful eggs that hatch into absolutely adorable sand-colored chicks.

The problem is that people also like sandy beaches. With nothing and no one to oppose us we converted some of these areas into commercial properties, others into homes and the leftovers into recreation areas. So, it doesn’t take much imagination to develop a picture of conflict in your mind. A small unobtrusive shorebird that has an evolution-crafted ability to hide in plain sight versus a large, oblivious primate that was just about to experience a geometric population explosion.

Humanity never intended to exterminate the piping plover. Instead, it simply overlooked the birds as it blindly groped for more and more of what it wanted. The birds clung to the margins and eked out an existence and, eventually, a few humans with the right combination of education and personal inclinations started to notice and take action. For the piping plover it was just in the nick of time.

Today, the stretch of coastline from Canada to North Carolina supports “fewer than 2,000” pairs of piping plovers. An excruciatingly imprecise number, this is apparently the best that the US Fish and Wildlife Service is capable of. To put this number into perspective, how many “pairs” of humans do you suppose there are in that same geographic area? There are other populations of piping plovers in the interior of the continent, but let’s just focus on the coastal population for now.

Here and there, in areas that somehow managed to go undeveloped, there are fragments of beach that have been cordoned off as nesting habitat. Small plastic signs ask humans to respect the areas “fenced off” with one or two strands of orange plastic string. But the birds don’t mind. Eggs are laid in nests that are hidden in the beachgrass and precocial chicks that are ready to walk just hours after hatching must toddle down to the water’s edge to feed themselves. Tiny, flightless and nearly helpless, the chicks will freeze in place to hide from a threat. If the threat is a truck, freezing won’t help.

So, I was absolutely thrilled to find myself face to face with a piping plover on a cloudy Tuesday in late June. Then, “thrilled” was upgraded to “ecstatic” when I discovered that it wasn’t just one bird, but an entire family! A long stretch of beach had been cordoned off and protected as a nesting area and the birds had taken full advantage. Two adult birds had managed to raise three chicks to the halfway point of their development and they went about their day as I quietly took photos. All they need is space and consideration, so the next time you find yourself at the beach try to remember that it is beautiful, relaxing and (for some animals) it is the only home that they have.

Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 23 years. He has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service and the Massachusetts State Parks and currently teaches high school biology and physics. Visit www.speakingofnature.com for more information, or head over to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.

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