The Plover Olympics

The state of Florida has asked us to census all of the snowy plovers on all of our beaches. It doesn't sound like a hard task until you understand the Park, and the plover, a little more.

Plovers are tiny, sand colored birds, about 5 to 6 inches long, that love to hide in foot prints and run from big scary humans. This one is really easy to find as the beach is so clear and it's darker back stands out against the sand.



Their nests are just a few eggs deposited in a little hollow in the sand. The parents carefully line the scrape with small bits of broken sea shell and tend the eggs for three to four weeks until they hatch. This six egg nest is exceedingly rare -- most are two to three eggs.



The mama and papa birds can be easy to spot when you get close to their eggs or chicks as they display wildly to attract your attention away from their young.



The chicks are a little harder to find. These are hiding behind some dead grass. While they appear to stick out once you find them, it helps to remember that this is one wee patch of dead grass on seven miles of beach, that we cover from the Gulf of Mexico to the Bay.



These little powderpuffs of tigerdown are so adorable that it's worth the search!



Their parents do a great job protecting them from the giant human predators too... and they provide lots of shade on the hot summer beach!



Finding them for this survey is like a large game of hide-and-go-seek. We know where a lot of the nests are, but there are solitary plovers, plovers still building nests, and new family groups wandering the mudflats feeding and hiding from predators. Once we find them, each plover, or small group, needs a unique GPS point. Since the birds fly from other birds, scare each other, and run when they hear or see our approaching ATVs, it's a little hard to get accurate locations, or even to know whether or not we are GPSing the same bird (yes, for a biologist, 'GPS' can be a verb).

In the best case scenario, that's the whole Olympic event -- search the seven mile sections of beach (of which we have three, each with a north and south shore), GPS each bird, and call it a day. Add in hunting osprey, wandering raccoons, the occasional dog, visiting people, airplanes and other distractions, and the job gets a bit more challenging. Figure in the least terns (LETE), and the job is nearly impossible.

See, at the National Seashore, plover nesting overlaps with black skimmer and least tern nesting. There aren't any skimmers in the park yet, but the LETEs have set up shop and are building scrapes and laying eggs, sometimes right along side the plovers. Sometimes, they harass the plovers so much they abandon their nests. They will dive at the little birds with their sharp beaks pointed at their heads, flapping their big, but elegant, tern wings and scaring the little guys away. They do the same to humans, dive bombing while shrieking at us and simultaneously blessing us with a load of guano. Lovely. Really. I mean it. It's lovely.

So, that's the birdy Olympics, and my lovely week at the park. While I may take a few minutes for lunch and be immortalized in a bad pic, I'm still working hard. Really Mom, I am!