About This BlogDuring the western snowy plover breeding season, park docents help monitor and protect nesting sites and help create awareness and educate visitors about this threatened species and its life cycle. Visitors have expressed interest in the plovers and are pleased to have staff and docents in the field answering all types of naturalist questions. Through the summer, park staff create updates to let staff, volunteers, and visitors know the latest on what is happening out at the nesting sites. Click on one of the links below to find out how the Snowy Plovers at Point Reyes were doing at the time. To learn more about becoming a Snowy Plover Docent, please visit our Volunteer page. Snowy Plover Update - September 1, 2023
September 02, 2023
No nests remain in the park and our last four broods are projected to fledge in the next week and a half. For the 2023 nesting season, overall nest success was 58%, and fledge success, thus far, is approximately 20.3%. We are currently at 14-15 fledges so far. If we can break 20 fledged plover chicks this season though, it’ll turn out to be a fairly productive season considering how low nest and chick survival were this year! Snowy Plover Update - August 23, 2023
August 24, 2023
This will be the second to last update of the season—we're on the home stretch! Our last two snowy plover nests on the Great Beach have hatched and both broods have been spotted in the past week: one halfway between Abbotts Lagoon and North Beach, and the other near the Lagoon mouth. There are at least two additional broods still running around as well: one near the mouth of Abbotts Lagoon and one on Limantour Spit. That makes four remaining broods of about six to ten chicks. Snowy Plover Update - August 12, 2023
August 12, 2023
Six nests have hatched since our last breeding season update, but the trend of low chick survival continues and only three of the broods have survived as of today. On a brighter note, the male of a North Beach brood secretly kept a chick hidden from us for an entire month (e.g., we thought he only had a single chick with him the entire time) and managed to fledge two out of three chicks this week! Thus far, we have confirmed 13 total fledges this season. Snowy Plover Update - July 31, 2023
July 31, 2023
We are likely in the last stretch of the nesting season: nine active nests remain, with a couple of them due to hatch in the next several days and another three projected to hatch at the end of next week. There may be two breeding pairs that may have new nests that we are still looking for, otherwise all of our breeding plovers have either joined up with the winter flocks or have emigrated to other sites along the coast. Snowy Plover Update - July 15, 2023
July 16, 2023
We’ve missed a couple weeks of news so this update will include a bit more content! It's been a rough few weeks on the snowy plover front. On top of losing five adults from exclosed nests at North Beach earlier this season, hatchling survival has been dismal. Most broods haven't survived more than a week. Fifty-seven plover chicks have hatched since the start of the season: eight have fledged, nine to twelve are still running around on the beach, and 37 have perished. Snowy Plover Update - June 25, 2023
June 25, 2023
We confirmed four additional snowy plover fledges for the season on Limantour Spit. We missed one fledge on North Beach this past week. We'll continue to search for this banded fledgling on our surveys—sometimes they'll stick around, looking for someone to hang out with until with until winter flocks form. We began observing incubating adults disappearing from exclosed nests near North Beach parking lot, causing a few nest abandonments. Snowy Plover Update - June 16, 2023
June 17, 2023
A couple of nests hatched since our last update, both on North Beach. Another nest is projected to hatch this weekend on Limantour Spit, bringing the number of broods at that site up to three! And a total of nine chicks! Things are looking great on Limantour Spit so far. We are still observing relatively low chick survival on North Beach, though we’re hoping these newly hatched broods will do better. Snowy Plover Update - June 9, 2023
June 09, 2023
We have our first confirmed fledgling of the nesting season! On June 8, biologists observed a single fledged chick still being tended to by an adult male snowy plover midway between the Abbotts Lagoon mouth and North Beach parking lot. This chick was one of two that hatched from within the Lagoon restoration area on May 12. Chick survival appears to be relatively low so far this season. We're about halfway through the season and we expect a new round of nests to pop up. Snowy Plover Update - June 2, 2023
June 02, 2023
We’re coming up to peak nesting season—June and July tend to be when we see the highest number of active snowy plovers nests and broods simultaneously. Since our last update, biologists have found three new nests in the seashore: one south of North Beach parking lot, one just north of Abbotts Lagoon, and one in the Abbotts Lagoon restoration area. We're expecting a couple more to pop up on Limantour Beach and in the Lagoon restoration area in the next couple weeks. Snowy Plover Update - May 29, 2023
May 29, 2023
It has been one incredible start to the nesting season—once the late season rains and storms stopped in mid- to late March, all the snowy plovers in the park decided it was go time! At the highest peak so far, we were able to locate 16 nests that were all active at once; we usually don't observe that much activity until peak nesting season in June and July! Average nest numbers this time of year is usually around 8–10 active nests. |
Last updated: May 29, 2023