Overview
Hello Ploverites!
It's looking like our birds are starting to make their final nesting attempts of the season! On Monday we found three new nests, all on the stretch of beach between Abbotts Lagoon and the North Beach Parking lot. We have also seen many birds without active nests paired up along this stretch of beach, so we hope to find them with eggs soon. Generally speaking, the last snowy plover nests of the year hit the ground in mid-July. With that timeline, we tend to see all our nests finished by mid-August and those chicks fledging around mid-September, which is the official end of the snowy plover breeding season.
One of the tricky parts of our surveys right now is being able to track down all of our active broods and confirm the number of chicks we have out on the beach. We've been very glad to see many males with successfully hatched nests still acting broody on various stretches of beach. Broody behaviors (a behavior suggesting chicks are nearby) we’re seeing right now are males flying around and coming up to us during surveys, performing lure displays to lead us away from where chicks may be, and calling incessantly to get our attention while the chicks hide somewhere in the foredunes or vegetation. One of our broods from Kehoe seems to have made its way down to the shoreline of Abbotts Lagoon in the restricted area (well over a mile from the nest!) and is due to fledge on Sunday. We hope to add more fledges to the board this coming week!
As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact Parker Kaye via email.
Productivity Stats
- 50 total nests this season
- 7 active nest
- 14 hatched
- 29 failed nests
- At least 9 chicks on PRNS beaches
- 5 chicks fledged
An adult male snowy plover banded violet over aqua on the left leg, white over white on the right leg (va:ww) performing a lure display while biologists check eggs at the nest on North Beach for signs of hatch. This behavior is seen most when a male is with chicks, or his eggs are very close to hatch. We expect his nest to hatch sometime next week.
Photo credit: Parker Kaye / PRNSA
An adult male snowy plover banded violet over aqua on the left leg, yellow over white on the right leg (va:yw) on North Beach. This male's neck is stretched out, indicating that he is alert and checking his surroundings for predators (include people). Based on when his nest hatched, va:yw likely still has chicks present on the beach.
Photo credit: Parker Kaye / PRNSA
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