Annick MacAskill
Piping Plover
These small birds love to hang out in groups and run around on beaches all over Nova Scotia. They can be hard to spot because they are small in size and the feathers on their backs are the same shade of beige as the sand they run around on. They have white bellies and orange beaks and legs. They can be distinguished even further by a black line above their eyes that makes it look like they have a ‘unibrow’! They also have a black ring of feathers around their necks. In fact, these black rings are how we usually tell which birds are male and which are female. During mating season (around the beginning of May) the male’s neckband of black feathers becomes much larger than that of the female.
Unfortunately, these little birds are listed as an endangered species, which means their population numbers aren’t very high. For the most part this is because humans keep building cottages, roads and other structures along the beaches where these birds like to live and more importantly, where they lay their eggs. These plovers like to lay their eggs higher up in the sand on beaches along the coast. It is important that their eggs are hidden in the sand and above the high water mark, so they can stay both protected and dry. If they have the chance, plovers will also often choose beaches where there is less vegetation, to make sure their eggs are only around sand. They lay their eggs after getting back from Central and South America in the spring and raise their babies all summer before they migrate back south for the winter.
Piping plovers are very well camouflaged while running around the intertidal areas of beaches, so another way to figure out if the birds are present is to listen for their light, short and almost hooting-like calls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggJltS0ZR90
Diet and Predation
Despite their small size, piping plovers are actually pretty hungry meat eaters!! They love to eat lots of small marine invertebrates that live in the sand and along the shore. Their normal diet consists of things like marine worms, beetles, crustaceans, insects and the larval forms of many other small organisms. Piping plovers are naturally hunted by animals like foxes, racoons and skunks that all love to eat the eggs from their nests. Falcons and hawks often try to eat the adult plovers as well. All these predators are believed to have a role in causing the plovers to be endangered, but in a natural setting predators by themselves are not usually enough to bring a species to an endangered level.
http://www.speciesatrisk.ca/stewardship/PipingPlover.html
Conservation
It is not only human development that destroys the piping plovers’ habitats, but also human recreational activity. We need to make sure they stay safe so they can increase their population to a healthier size.
When we play, run, jump and even build sandcastles on beaches where these birds have laid their eggs, we risk killing lots of unhatched baby birds and that really hurts the natural populations of the piping plover. The easiest and best way to help them is to give these birds their space. Even though they are cute and friendly, they are really sensitive to human interference. Admire them from a distance!
A lot of Nova Scotian beaches are well marked with signs showing the areas that piping plovers like to use for nesting; make sure you follow instructions on those signs. But it’s also a good idea always to keep your eyes open for piping plovers yourself. If you see them, play far away from them and their nests and make sure to tell other people, so they don’t accidentally hurt the birds or their nests. The piping plover would really thank you a lot!
Piping plovers can often be seen at Pomquet Beach, Antigonish County, where there is a well-marked area protecting their nesting ground.
Matthew Freeman
