Chuck Tague

Ponce Inlet Lighthouse Park, November 20, 2008 

    The sea air was warm yet crisp; the wind calm.  A shadow appeared to float ahead of the waves as the surf rolled gently across the sand.  With my binoculars I saw it was a Piping Plover, a shorebird that resembles a sand-colored tennis ball with short, orange legs and a pigeon’s beak.  A white collar circled its neck.

    The plover’s legs scissored frantically to stay ahead of the water.  When the surf retreated, the plover stopped and waited as a wet, glass-like film formed across the beach.  The bird skiddled onto the wet sand then stopped abruptly.  It extended its right foot, tapped rapidly on the beach, tilted its head slightly, hopped forward three steps and tapped again.

The plover wasn’t distracted as I moved closer with my camera.  It repeatedly retreated from the waves; ran back over the glassy sand and vibrated one foot.  With each cycle the bird moved closer to me.  Occasionally the plover would lunge and peck at something.

    Piping Plovers are only in Florida during the non-breeding season.  They are beach birds that blend perfectly with the dry strip between the high tide line and the dunes.  Their upper plumage precisely mimics dirty sand.  Their countershaded light underside deadens any telltale shadows so thoroughly that they disappear in plain sight.  Piping Plovers feed on invertebrates above the tide line but they also forage in the intertidal zone as the tide recedes. The foot tapping causes sea worms, clams and other buried animals to move and give away their position.

    I watched the plover for five or six minutes.  It pecked the sand a dozen times or so, but if it caught anything it was too small for me to see.  Something spooked the gulls and terns loafing a short distance away.  They circled and when they landed the plover was gone.

    There are three distinct breeding populations of Piping Plovers.  Those that nest on the Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Newfoundland are listed as threatened, as are the plovers that breed in the midwestern prairies.  The endangered population around the Great Lakes declined drastically during the Twentieth Century.  Historically Piping Plovers bred in all the Great Lake states and provinces.  Several pairs nested on Presque Isle in Erie County through the late nineteen-fifties.  Their breeding range is now limited to northern Lake Michigan.  The plover's main threats are habitats lost to coastal development and disturbance by beach-loving humans.  In 1986 there were only 17 breeding pairs in the Great Lakes region.  By 2011 there were 54 pairs.

Feral cat, Ponce Inlet, 12-12-12

Because their population is so small, nest predators -- raccoons, snakes, gulls, dogs and feral cats -- have a disproportionate effect and the nests require constant monitoring and protection.  Although conservation efforts have increased the Great Lake population the plovers have a long way to go before they are no longer endangered.

    Piping Plovers are not unusual along Florida's Atlantic coast, but I seldom see more than a few at a time.  Birds from all three populations migrate to the Gulf and the southern Atlantic coasts and mix freely during the winter.  I wondered where the bird with pattering feet came from.

Ponce Inlet Lighthouse Park, October 27, 2012

    Hurricane Sandy passed far off central Florida's shore the night before.  Volusia County felt the storm's immense power but the destruction was minimal compared to the damage that would occur farther north.  Although we were still under a hurricane warning I met my friends Patsy and Ken Hunter at Ponce Inlet to scan for seabirds.

Huge waves broke high over the rock jetty; the northeasterly winds were brutal.  The full moon had just set so the tide was already at its monthly high.  The surf crashed over the dunes and forced the small shorebirds to take shelter in the sea oats.  We had to wait for the tide to recede to walk the beach.

    It was 10:30 am before we ventured along the narrow strip between the waves and the eroded dunes.  Ruddy Turnstones, Sanderlings and a few plovers huddled five feet above the flats.  They peered over the freshly cut cliffs and watched the water lap away the vertical walls and rivulets flow back to the sea.

    Several hundred yards up the beach we found a series of deep cuts where the waves had washed out chunks of the dunes.  Several hundred shorebirds foraged in the fresh canyons, sheltered from the wind.  There were three Piping Plovers among the Sanderlings and turnstones.  One had colored bands and a red flag on its leg.

    The banded plover snatched a quarter-sized crab washed from its hole in the sand.  It was too wide to swallow but food had been scarce for days and the hungry bird could not afford to pass up a meal.  It ran with the receding water; dropped the crab and rubbed it in the abrasive slurry.  The plover grabbed it by a leg and retreated as the waves returned.  It repeated this until the crab was legless and its shell cracked.

    Later I obtained this band information from my photos and sent it to the Bird Banding Laboratory in Patuxent, MD:

Species: Piping Plover

Band number: Unknown

Marker_info: Right leg band #1: Green

Left leg band #1: Light Blue

Left leg band #2: Green

Left Leg flag: Red

    They forwarded the information to the bander, Alice Van Zoeren.  She sent this reply:

Thank you for taking the time to report your sighting of a Piping Plover from the Great Lakes population.

    The plover you saw and photographed was hatched in 2009 on North Manitou Island in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and banded as an adult last summer (2012) at Gulliver, MI along the north shore of Lake Michigan in the upper peninsula.

    It was from 0ne of the Great Lakes plovers on its fourth journey to Florida -- a rare bird indeed.