Overview
Hello Ploverites!
And just like that, our breeding snowy plovers have wrapped up for the season! Last Tuesday, our team made it out to Limantour Beach, and we were able to locate two freshly fledged, banded chicks as well as our surprise chick noted in the last update. Based on its appearance, we were able to approximate the age of our happy surprise and confirm that it had also fledged, bringing our total of wild fledged birds to 26. Including our International Bird Rescue (IBR) fledges, Point Reyes National Seashore brought 29 new snowy plovers into the world this season, which is our second highest ever, only behind the 31 fledges from last year! I'm still holding out hope some young birds quite literally flew under our radar and we will be able to add them to our total. Given the challenges these birds faced early and throughout the year, it's nothing less than amazing to see the success that they had.
We're still working on crunching the numbers and getting our data in order, but here are some preliminary statistics for the breeding season (disclaimer: numbers are likely to change):
In 2025, we conducted well over 200 surveys on park beaches to determine abundance and distribution of breeding snowy plovers, including 15 surveys from trained volunteers. The majority of our surveys were conducted between Abbotts Lagoon and the North Beach parking lot, Limantour Beach, and Kehoe Beach.
A minimum estimate of 50 snowy plovers bred at Point Reyes, resulting in no change of population size compared to 2024 (n = 50 birds). We continued to use the mini-exclosure (ME) design that we updated in 2022, based on designs from Point Blue Conservation Science and Bolsa Chica Preserve. These updated MEs were placed around 34 of 56 nests located in 2025. Of the 56 nests, 27 hatched at least one egg and 64 of 152 eggs hatched. Hatch success for exclosed nests was 61.8% (21 of 34 nests). Hatch success for unexclosed nests was 27.3% (6 of 22 nests). One nest with 3 eggs near Abbotts Lagoon was collected due to abandonment from a windstorm and transported to International Bird Rescue. Another heavily damaged individual egg was collected and brought to IBR where it successfully hatched.
Twenty-nine of 64 chicks survived for at least 28 days after hatching (46.0% fledge rate). The average fledging success rate in the previous five years was 41.6%. The estimate for per capita reproductive success (0.96) was lower than in 2024 (1.29) and slightly lower than the 1.0 threshold that is needed to increase the population size (ignoring immigration and emigration into and out of the local population).
As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact Parker Kaye via email.
Productivity Stats
- 56 total nests this season
- 0 active nests
- 27 hatched
- 29 failed nests
- 0 chicks on PRNS beaches
- 26 chicks fledged
- 3 PRNS juveniles released from IBR
Thank you all for your continued support throughout this season!
Photos
Two snowy plover chicks and an unhatched egg in their nest bowl nestled between pieces of driftwood at Abbotts Lagoon.
Photo credit: Parker Kaye / PRNSA
The National Park Service shall not be held liable for improper or incorrect use of the data described and/or contained herein. These data and related graphics (if available) are not legal documents and are not intended to be used as such. The information contained in these data is dynamic and may change over time. The National Park Service gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy, reliability, or completeness of these data. For more information: https://www.nps.gov/disclaimer.htm