Overview
Hello Plover lovers! We had our second to last nest hatch this week on Kehoe Beach (see photo of the little hatchlings below). Additionally, we added two more fledglings to the board! These two chicks hatched on Kehoe Beach about a month ago. This stretch of beach has seen a productive uptick in breeding activity during the last month of the breeding season (six total nests, of which four have hatched).
Biologists have observed an unusual event on this site: a nest hatched on the 16th of July, producing two chicks. Days after the hatch, we surveyed the site and found the father of these chicks (let's call him Avery) without any chicks; so we recorded that this brood did not survive. In the following weeks, we confirmed that Avery didn't have any chicks, as he was frequently observed roosting with other adult plovers and didn't show any behaviors of having any chicks.
This past week, we observed a different father (let's call him Bob) with chicks, but he was also tending to an additional two chicks (four chicks total!) that appeared a bit younger than the other two. We checked their bands, and they happened to be the chicks that Avery lost! They were somehow adopted by Bob and being raised by him! We are unsure of how this happened, but we are glad to have two more chicks that will potentially fledge in the next few weeks.
Here are updates organized by beach sites:
Kehoe (K)
There are no longer any nests active on this site, though there are two active broods running around south of the plover fencing. Two chicks were just confirmed to have fledged from a third brood. A small winter flock of adult plovers can be found in the same area. This is the site where we observed the odd story of adopted hatchlings!
Abbotts Lagoon Restoration Area (RA)
No plovers have been observed in this large native dune habitat in months, likely due to heavy nest loss earlier in the season and in past seasons.
Abbotts Lagoon to North Beach parking lot (NP)
No active nests are left on this site. We have two active broods approximately one mile north of North Beach parking lot: one that is about a week and a half old and another brood that will be fledging sometime next week. There are small, scattered flocks on the southern portion of this beach site.
North Beach (NB)
We have not observed any nesting activity or adult birds on this site in the past week, but we will continue to survey for winter flocks.
Limantour (L)
There is one active nest on Limantour Spit that is projected to next week, which means we will have a brood persisting into September on this site; this is a very late season nest. We observed approximately fifty-five snowy plovers on this site, scattered along the beach from the parking lot going west toward the end of the spit. This beach site typically has the park's largest winter flock, consisting of migrant plovers from elsewhere along the coast as well as plovers that bred at inland sites (e.g., Mono Lake or Great Salt Lake).
South Beach (SB)
No breeding activity or adult birds have been observed on this site in the past few weeks.
If you have any questions, please feel free to let Matt Lau, the park's Snowy Plover Ecologist, know via email. Thank you so much, again, for all your help!
Current Stats
- 34 nests so far this season
- 1 active nest
- 12 hatched
- 21 failed nests
- 7 chicks on the beach
- 9–11 chicks fledged
Two chicks that hatched this week on Kehoe Beach. The remaining egg is not expected to hatch and is likely nonviable.
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