Piping Plover, 15, sets mark for longevity
Piping Plover 2024 Season Preview: Banner year stirs hopes across the Great Lakes.
Every Piping Plover that makes it to the species’ median age of 5 to 6 years is a gift. There is increased mortality during the birds’ fragile first weeks and months, then there are all the perils of migration, from wind turbines to hurricanes, predators, and more. So it’s always special when a federally endangered Piping Plover is long-lived. That’s the case with Gabby, 15, oldest known female and now tied with two males, Old Man Plover and BRR, for longest-lived Great Lakes Piping Plover since banding and tracking the birds began in the 90s. The good news came this winter when Gabby, a bird of Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan, was seen at Cumberland Island, Georgia.
“It’s awesome, she’s a smart plover and has fledged a lot of chicks, 33 in her time,” says Stephanie Schubel of the Great Lakes Piping Plover Conservation Team. “I’m excited to see if she returns, I’m sure she will as long as things go well. We shall see, she has been through a lot. She’s a survivor.”
There is hopefulness this spring across the lakes as 2023 delivered a banner year for Piping Plovers. There were 80 pairs nesting last year, a new record since the species was placed on the endangered list (there were about a dozen pairs in 1990). The success was fueled by a large number of fledglings during the year prior.
A novel strategy during 2023 may pay off in the form of another record year in 2024. The conservation team monitors nests throughout breeding season and rescues eggs when they are threatened. The eggs are incubated, hatched, and reared in captivity. Chicks typically are released in northern Michigan. Last year, chicks also were released along Lake Michigan in Illinois, at Chicago and Illinois Beach State Park. There they were under the many watchful volunteers of Sharing Our Share-Waukegan and Chicago Piping Plovers.
In 2022 and 2023, Imani, a male and offspring of Monty and Rose, was the lone plover at Montrose Beach in Chicago. Late last summer, he was joined by Wild Indigo, Prickly Pear, and Sea Rocket, rescued from a nest in upstate New York. They eventually flew south. Though none have been seen on the wintering grounds, we shouldn’t be alarmed.
“I’m hopeful that Imani is somewhere, we don’t know where he goes,” says Schubel. “He’s still the average age of a plover so all things considered hopefully he stays safe and has s safe migration to come back to Montrose. He seems very attached to that site.”
North of Chicago, at Illinois Beach, four chicks were released, with Blaze, Pepper, and Sunny making it to fledging, which essentially means they were old enough to fly south. Pepper (photo below) was photographed in Fort Myers, Florida, in late August. Blaze was seen in North Carolina in January. Sunny has yet to be seen
Schubel notes that captive-reared birds have a relatively high likelihood of returning to where they were released. This could bode well for Illinois Piping Plover fans.
I asked Schubel if this year’s ultra-mild winter would impact Piping Plovers in some way. Great Lakes ice coverage has reached a historic low. On the other hand, lake levels have been relatively low, which leaves more beach.
“Ice scours and takes away some of the vegetation coming up,” she says. “We could have more vegetation coming up [this year] and making the habitat not as preferable for plovers. I don’t know exactly what could happen. We definitely have sites with more rocks and others with good sandy places—their nests just look different.”
As always, predators like the Merlin, a small falcon, are as much a threat as anything. Last year’s good captive-rearing year was in part in response to losing adults to predation. The exact formula for plover nesting success is imprecise and hard to predict.
“We did lose a lot of adults last year, that’s why we had a record captive rearing year,” Schubel says, “and we need adults to have pairs. We could just as easily go down into the 70s [pairs].”
One never knows what will happen during a season, but with more people looking for plovers—and more plovers than in decades—there is reason for optimism again. In my experience, we’ve generally been in for some welcome surprises. Now we just need to be ready for the first arrivals on some lonesome Great Lakes shores this April.
Every time I see a post from you my morning turns delightful here in the rainy NW!