Tag: North American Shore Birds

Piping Plovers Found Dead in CT. MA conservation plans eased and peaceful

Posted on by Catherine

The US Fish and Wildlife Service, Massachusetts Wildlife, announced a new statewide piping plover conservation plan last Friday.

Thank you to the GMG reader who saw the news on TV, and wrote a comment on the Disney-Pixar post. Massachusetts may be the model for North America. The MA Wildlife report includes the conservation approach implemented in Cape Cod last year, home to 60+% of MA piping plover population.  I don’t have the tv station’s coverage, but I included the WBUR wire pick, and piping plover reports from CT, NH, and ME. Kim Smith is covering the pair on Good Harbor Beach. Nesting Piping Plovers have been seen on Coffins Beach and Revere Beach.

Currently, the Atlantic coast population (North Carolina to Eastern Canada) of piping plovers continues to hold steady just under 2,000 pairs. The Massachusetts State Department of Fish and Wildlife targets maintaining 625 pairs with greater intervention should the population fall below 500 pairs.

Boston Globe
YR 2013, State Department Fish and Wildlife

 

Piping plovers were not rare enough to be described as a ‘wild’ species in 1895 in Daniel Giraud Elliot’s North American Shore Birds. He wrote that where the species had been formerly ‘most abundant’ the piping plover was “found chiefly on the more retired parts of the cost where it was free from molestation…its acquaintance with man has caused it to be at the present time, in most places where it is found, a rather wary bird.” The fattened birds were “palatable, yet sometimes sedgy in flavor.” Skunks and other predators, influx in summer population, and loss of habitat were concerns. Plastic trash is a striking difference now. At least we don’t eat them.

CONNECTICUT

Three Piping Plovers were recently killed in their nesting habitat at Griswold Point in Old Lyme CT. It’s believed a fourth was intentionally stepped on in Bluff Point State Park in Groton, CT. “People ignore the signs.”

Screenshot_071116_082958_AM.jpg
2 minute video

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Conservation monitors the piping plovers.  The Connecticut Audubon Society doesn’t maintain piping plover information, however they do have an incredible osprey project to report. Tom Andersen told me that the CT Audubon Society has built up a network of more than 300 volunteers to find and monitor osprey. An intern has plotted the work of these citizen scientists on this Osprey Nation map. Nests have grown from 200 to 500. I think I’m inspired to do a map of the piping plovers if someone in MA or in the state office hasn’t done it already!

MASSACHUSETTS – CAPE COD

Massachusetts may be the national model.

Read WBUR on the MA Wildlife press release with a focus on Nauset New Plan Allows Beachgoers More Room While Protecting Piping Plovers

David Abel wrote about it back in January for the Boston Globe (January 21, 2016)  Beachgoers may get break as plovers rebound:  

“In Orleans, after years of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in fees for stickers to drive on town beaches, local officials independently sought and obtained a federal waiver last year to allow a limited number of vehicles back on the beach.” 

“For Russ Hopping, who oversees about 27 miles of beaches from Ipswich to Nantucket for the Trustees of Reservations, a federal waiver would mean more than getting rid of some fences on their beaches. It would mean fewer headaches. With some 60 plover pairs on their beaches last summer, Hopping hopes new flexibility would translate into fewer complaints and greater protection for the birds. 

“That we’ve reached the point that this opportunity even exists represents a conservation success story for Massachusetts,” he said.

Nauset WBUR
photograph Jesse Costa/WBUR

South shore and Plum Island stories have been contentious (e.g. WBZ’s 2010 story in Plymouth Are they protecting the plovers or their view? )

The town of Duxbury canceled their annual 4th of July beach bonfire because piping plover pairs returned and were nesting year after year. “Most Duxbury residents said they understand the need to cancel the bonfire for the bird. Since the birds return every year, the committee said next year they’ll consider a new tradition of having the beach bonfire at another time.”

NEW HAMPSHIRE

There are 7 pairs  reported in NH right now in Seabrook and Hampton. “Since protection efforts began in New Hampshire in 1997 through 2015, 99 nesting pairs of plovers have fledged 127 chicks on the state’s seacoast.”

MAINE

The Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge and Maine Audubon  report Piping Plovers first sightings in 2016 on beaches at Kennebunkport, Kennebunk and Old Orchard Beach. They’re sending an estimate about nests.

MASSACHUSETTS- CAPE ANN- Gloucester

search for Kim Smith’s exceptional documentation and photographs on Good Morning Gloucester about the one nesting pair on Good Harbor Beach

more on GMG:

 

Deborah Cramer bird watch report: Piping plovers, oyster catcher, red knots sandpipers

Posted on by Catherine

Deborah Cramer update related to the Narrow Edge GMG post:

“Piping plovers are also on Coffin’s Beach, an oyster catcher has come into Essex Bay, and in a few weeks, and right now the red knots are up in the Arctic nesting.  They’ll be heading back later this summer, and some will pause to refuel in Essex Bay.”

 

David Eliot Gould’s 1895 entry on piping plovers reads like the summer of 2016:

“From many of its resorts along the Atlantic Coast, where in former days it was most abundant, it has been driven by the advance of fashion and the influx of the summer’s passing population, until it is now found chiefly on the more retired parts of the coast where it is most free from molestation.”  

I’ve added the illustration. The artist, “Ernest” Sheppard, illustrated scientific and natural history, primarily birds, including History of North American Birds in 1874.  He was on the staff of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia; in 1969 he was one member of the 3 man ornithological committee of the Academy that pleaded for more funding and care in their department. So, what did they ask for “to ensure the preservation of the best collection of birds on the continent, and, with one exception, the largest in the world” ?

First they recounted recent acquisitions such as a rare egg of the Great Auk. Then they explained that the repository required more funding,  space, display,  inventory systems, and conservation (a tricky endeavor with these specimens.) Insects were on the warpath! Poison was effective.

The 2016 restoration of the Civil War coat and display options may resonate.

Sheppard
illustration from the 1895 book by David Eliot Gould, North American Shore Birds; a history of the snipes, sandpipers, plovers and their allies, inhabiting the beaches and marshes, illustration by Edwin Sheppard.

 

From the ornithological committee’s submission to the annual report, excerpted from Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Volume 21, 1869

1869 PA Academy