Rare plover may be making a comeback
Rare plover may be making a comeback
| U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist Christie Deloria-Sheffield talks with an off-road vehicle operator at Port Inland about closed access to an area where a pair of endangered piping plovers were nesting along Lake Michigan. Vehicle traffic is one significant hazard to plover nests, which are basically small scapes made into the beach sands. (Journal photo by John Pepin) |
By JOHN PEPIN, Journal Munising Bureau
This was Port Inland near Gulliver in Schoolcraft County — a place where an active Oglebay-Norton Minerals quarry operation kept working while one of the Great Lakes’ rarest shorebirds nested comfortably nearby.
In fact, three nests of the endangered piping plover were located at Port Inland this summer. Last year, weather washed out two nests here and a predator may have eaten chicks from two nests that did hatch.
But this summer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists monitoring the nests at Port Inland say the reproductive success of birds here is expected to have improved.
“Yesterday, this nest had four eggs that hatched,” said USFWS Wildlife Biologist Christie Deloria-Sheffield. “Today, we’re going to try to find the chicks.”
Sheffield knelt with a pair of binoculars. Within a minute or two, she spots something. Two adult plovers scooted down the shore, their plumage almost identical making separating males and females by appearance difficult.
While the piping sound floated on the air, three tiny day-old chicks popped out of the beach grass and zipped behind their parents over the sand toward the mid-morning sun.
Nearby, two adult plovers took turns sitting on eggs in a nest, protected by a wire enclosure erected by biologists. The birds can walk through the bars of the fence to get to and from the nest, but the fencing, and blueberry mesh over the top of the rectangular box, keeps out predators including foxes, eagles and small falcons called merlins.
Just a few feet from the nest, an off-road vehicle rider stopped to read a sign where access to the beach was blocked because of the nest. Sheffield stopped to talk to the man who said he’d been a Port Inland quarry retiree, telling him about the nest site.
Later, Sheffield would walk a mile or so down the beach to check the status of another nest located farthest away from the quarry operation. Industry officials have worked with biologists here to help protect plover nesting areas and allow biologists access to check nests.
Last year, a record was set within the Great Lakes for the highest number of piping plovers so far at 58 pairs, most located in Michigan, primarily downstate.
This summer, roughly 50 plover pairs have been discovered, including just under a dozen in the Upper Peninsula. The federal recovery goal set for the species in the Great Lakes is 150 pairs.
From central Canada, down through the Dakotas into Nebraska, piping plover numbers are much higher. Some of the birds also breed along the eastern seaboard, with plovers spending winters along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
Consequently, last year’s hurricanes in the south caused a good deal of concern for biologists tracking plovers.
To help keep track of the birds, biologists band them at the nesting sites with an array of leg bands and flags. One of the Great Lakes birds was verified in the Bahamas over the winter, while one of the female birds banded last summer downstate at Wilderness State Park as a juvenile became one of the Port Inland parents this year.
While piping plover numbers have risen, their nesting locations in the Upper Peninsula have also spread to wider areas. Some traditional nesting sites include Grand Marais, Pointe aux Chenes, Gulliver Lake outlet, and Vermilion Beach near Whitefish Point.
This year, biologists were excited to discover plovers nesting on a small island off Aronson Island in Escanaba.
“We’ve never had any birds nesting in that part of Delta County for at least thirty years,” Sheffield said.
Last year, in the Great Lakes, fledgling success was variable by site, but totaled 93 wild fledged and 15 birds released from a captive rearing program which hatches eggs recovered from abandoned nest sites throughout the region.
This season’s piping plover successes and failures will ultimately be determined and released later this year.
For now, the small endangered shorebirds will have a few more weeks of walking the sandy Lake Michigan beaches at Port Inland before winging south for winter months.
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