I caught sight of this Piping Plover late in the afternoon as she(?) stretched her legs and went off to feed in the surf; she’d just been relieved of nest-sitting duties by her mate. She preened her feathers some, stretched her wings and disappeared into the crowd of sun-worshipers.
Her eggs are expected to hatch in about 14 days!
As the peak of summer bloom approaches, a foray into the local botanical garden offers something that feels like meditation. With the familiar heft of my camera in hand, I am occupied with wonder. There, just there, tucked into a sunny corner of the demonstration garden, a patch of lavender is busy with bees…
Last summer I was craving a Lensbaby; I will likely spend this summer making many mistakes in learning how to use its wide-angle and bendy-action to best effect. I hope you’ll enjoy seeing in a new way along with me.
Suddenly, baby cottontails seem to be everywhere, as do ticks.
I’m counting on you all not getting too tired of these fuzzy snapshots of Piping Plovers…
; )
I’ve been “occasionally” volunteering as a plover warden at Seven President’s Park in Long Branch for a little over a month now… meaning I show up there when the mood strikes me and walk the wrack line and look officious with my badge and binoculars and big camera lens…
: )
Until this past weekend, I was monitoring nothing beyond a space set aside for the hope of nesting Piping Plovers. A pair had made an attempt in late April, but hadn’t been seen since… I kept showing up anyway when I needed an ocean fix, but really had started to wonder if my time there made any sense.
These birds are notoriously hard to see and survive mostly by being invisible, so I kept telling myself that I just wasn’t looking hard enough, you know?
The Least Terns showed up and they were enough of a distraction for a while that I was able to feel like my presence there was important enough. But…
I heard just today that there are two nesting pairs with eggs(!) and those nests have been protected with exclosures…
: )
So now the serious business begins… where’s my whistle?
Reed’s Beach is a tiny bayshore community located about 10 miles north of Cape May. It and other similarly sleepy and bug-infested places along the shores of Delaware Bay find themselves, for a couple weeks each year in late May/early June, at the convergence of diverse and, often, conflicting interests.
Firstly, there is the time-honored claim made by the horseshoe crab. The spring tides attract them to the calm bay shores to spawn and lay their eggs, by the billions.
Drawn specifically to the horseshoe crabs themselves, rather than their eggs, are commercial fishermen. Their value to the biomedical industry and as bait for eel and conch has led to a severe decline in the horseshoe crab population recently.
Next there are the birds that are lured to the bonanza of food presented by the spawning horseshoe crabs… all the seaside regulars show up to eat… gulls, grackles, shorebirds, crows… the beach is a living (and loud!) mosaic of birdlife.
Add the occasional predator to the scene, in this case a Peregrine, and you have the perfect recipe for a birder orgy. Birders love to see such drama and spectacle.
Our claim to this extravaganza, as birders, is a relatively recent one. Crabs and shorebirds were converging here on the Delaware Bay for any number of years without anyone really being aware of it. No sooner had the birding community come to know of it, than it almost disappeared.
Almost!
The star species in this spectacle of birds and crabs is the Red Knot. A robin-sized shorebird that undertakes a world-class migration and stops, midpoint, at Delaware Bay to refuel on its journey to the Arctic to breed.
Scientists and the birding community have watched their numbers plummet year after year. This year, on the lucky day we were there to witness it, some 5,000 had just arrived from Tierra del Fuego. 5,000 sounds like an impressive number until you understand that you’re looking at approx. half the Eastern population of a species.
Half of all the Red Knots in my world were spread there on the beach in front of us and still the shoreline looked mostly empty. A Peregrine appeared on the horizon and cut through the panicked flock, reducing it by one, perhaps. One less than half the population landed again, only to be panicked from their feeding, yet again, by a photographer or a fisherman intent on the jetty.
We all stake our claims…
One of the finest and most informative videos I’ve yet found is available at this link from PBS.
: )
I haven’t had the heart to visit Cape May for the spring shorebird migration for a while now; probably it’s been almost 10 years, in fact.
However, the chance to share the spectacle with someone who hadn’t ever witnessed it motivated me enough to bear the chance of a broken heart for what’s been lost on the Delaware Bayshore in recent years.
I was so hoping to find more than a memory there. And we were lucky to be there on a day when the moon and the tides were in our favor… and there were thousands and thousands of shorebirds!
These first couple pics are mostly Semipalmated Sandpipers, I think. I could spend the next couple weeks trying to separate them from the Sanderlings I think I know so well.
What I hope you’ll take away from these pics is the sheer abundance of birds gathered there to feed and rest.
For all the denying I like to do about shorebirds, their beauty is hard to counter. Conveniently, in spring, they’re all decked out in their finest and mostly like to huddle together with their own kind, making ID easier. These are Dunlin. Aren’t they beautiful?
: )
And we found Red Knots, thank goodness! Counters estimated 5,000 in the area of Reed’s Beach that day and while I was glad for our good timing in being there on the day that they were finally “in”, the truth behind that 5,000 is not so heartening as it might seem…
More another day.
I thought I’d take a minute to share some pix and an update on the Piping Plovers out at Sandy Hook. I got to spend some quality time with them on World Series Day when all the serious birders were sorting through the gulls and terns amassed at the end of the Fishermen’s Trail.
Did I mention that we made two death marches out there that day to look at gulls?
: )
I’ve decided this season to volunteer as a shorebird monitor at a different site, rather than Sandy Hook. At our site, we don’t yet have a pair of nesting Plovers and with each day that passes the chances of a pair nesting there decreases. It’s likely that we’ll have Least Terns, though, so I’ll still have an excuse to hang out at the beach after work a couple days a week.
Sandy Hook is a very productive site and already this season has something like 30 nesting pairs. The dunes are decorated with electrified nest exclosures like this one pictured… each one marking the location of an active nest.
The nest exclosures take the invisible and make it very conspicuous. It’d be hard to stumble upon and destroy a nest so clearly identified in this way. The electrical shock is said to be mild and just enough to deter predators like foxes and gulls from gaining entry. I’ve read that foxes continue to be a problem, however, as some learn to dig under the exclosure to get at the nest within.
Sadly, a mild shock is not enough to deter malicious people from willfully destroying Plover nests. About-to-hatch eggs were removed from an electrified exclosure at Sandy Hook a couple summers ago. That sad story is available here. Of course no one will ever be caught, but the reward sign still stands at the beginning of the Fishermen’s Trail.
Even though it goes against the Plover’s natural defense mechanism – being invisible – I’d guess these exclosures are a good thing in that they make the nests out-of-bounds for the casual beach-walker or off-leash dog. For the occasional idiot intent on hurting them, the exclosure marks an easy target.
Working the tide lines and wet sand in wash zones, both adults and chicks will seek the shore to find worms, fly larvae, beetles, crustaceans, mollusks and other invertebrates to pluck from the sand.
On World Series Day I was lucky enough to witness a nest exchange; the male sneaking in to take over egg-warming duties from the female. Later in the day, I found the pair feeding together at the shoreline.
I’m assuming this is a pair, anyway!
How such a small and unassuming bird survives in this harsh and changeable world is an incredible story. For all their dauntless spirit, Piping Plovers always seem to live on the edge of extinction, facing every year fewer nesting beaches, increasing pollution, human development and a growing population of predators. They deserve every bit of protection we can afford them.
And as much camera time as they’ll comfortably allow.
: )
Yesterday was World Series Day here in NJ; a slow migrant day, but we did find some sweet birds. Two special species are pictured here… anyone care to venture a guess at them?
We ended with 116 species for the day, far from last year’s best of 143, but not so bad!
