Nature: Piping plover's nest offers hope for shorebirds' return

Nature: Piping plover's nest offers hope for shorebirds return

Piping plovers are tiny, charismatic shorebirds. While closely related to the familiar killdeer, they are much smaller, weighing half as much as their burlier relative.

Beaches and piping plovers are inseparable. Piping plovers nest on beaches, winter on beaches, and rest and feed on beaches in migration. They even look like beach, with their upperparts colored like dry sand. A dark ring bisects the pale breast, and the legs and bill are orange-yellow.

Historically, piping plovers were common on beaches along the Atlantic seaboard from the Florida Keys north to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. John James Audubon wrote this about them in the 1830’s:

“Their notes, which are so soft and mellow as to nearly resemble those of the sweetest songster in the forest, reach your ear long before you have espied the piping plover. …these sounds come from perhaps twenty different directions, and you are perplexed, as well as delighted.”

The first Ohio piping plover nest was found on June 26, 1903 at Cedar Point in Lucas County near Toledo, which is now part of Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge (this is NOT the amusement park site). William Dawson and James Hines, the discoverers, photographed the nest and published the details in Dawson’s book The Birds of Ohio, published that same year.

Over the next two decades, breeding plovers were found in five other Lake Erie counties: Ashtabula, Erie, Lake, Lorain, and Ottawa. At their peak in the mid 1920’s, an estimated 30 pairs of piping plovers bred along Ohio’s portion of Lake Erie. But the majority nested around Cedar Point.

By the mid 1930’s the population was waning. The last Ohio nesting record was of two pairs in 1942, at Cedar Point. As the decades went by, few ornithologists were optimistic that piping plovers would return to nest.

The bigger picture of Great Lakes piping plovers also became grim. By 1990, the population throughout the five lakes had dropped to about 13 pairs, this from a historical high of perhaps 800 pairs.

While periodic high water levels played a role in adversely affecting beach habitat, a much bigger factor is people. In 1903, when Dawson and Hines first found nesting plovers in Ohio, the state’s population was about 4 million people. Today, we are closing in on 12 million. The human population has grown similarly throughout much of the Great Lakes, and increased beach-going has displaced many piping plovers.

In 1986, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service listed piping plover as endangered, and the ensuing efforts to protect the species have borne fruit. The Great Lakes population has rebounded to around 70 pairs.

Thus, it was great news when local birder Warren Leow located a pair of piping plovers at Maumee Bay State Park in late May. He involved expert birder Paul Jacyk, who realized that the birds were commencing nesting activity. Jacyk notified the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Ohio Division of Wildlife, and efforts to safeguard the birds were soon afoot.

I visited Ohio’s celebrity piping plovers on June 10. The birds chose not to nest on the Lake Erie beach, but selected a sheltered artificial beach on a manmade lake just 300 feet inland from Lake Erie. This site is only two miles west of the former Cedar Point breeding epicenter.

The plover nest is surrounded by a large wire enclosure, which is standard protective protocol. The cage prevents predation of the eggs by gulls and other predators. Both plover parents were born in similar cages and are unfazed by the contraption. They easily slip through the mesh and come and go at will. The wildlife agencies also taped off a large section of beach, forbidding entry. Had they not, the nest wouldn’t have had a chance given the site’s popularity with beach-goers.

Nellie, the female, was born last year in Presque Isle, Pennsylvania. Nish, the male, was also born in 2020, but along Lake Michigan near Chicago. Both take turns with incubation duties.

The first egg was laid on May 31, and a few days later the clutch was complete with four eggs. They should have hatched by the time you read this, and the precocial chicks can walk within a few hours. Hopefully they will flourish, and become the first successful Ohio piping plover brood in over 80 years.

In addition to the wildlife agencies, much credit goes to the local Black Swamp Bird Observatory for organizing an army of volunteers to nest-watch. I met volunteers Julie Heitz and Jack Burris on site, and they and their counterparts ensure that the birds remain undisturbed. Jack has been there almost every day since the nest was found, often from 6 am to 10 pm. Without Jack, Julie and the others’ vigilance, the probability of a successful nesting would plummet.

A collective 100 grams of piping plovers has caused an outsized stir in the Ohio birding community. They send a message of hope, and recovery. Here’s to Nish and Nellie.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.