10A • June 2, 2017 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com
Snowy plover hatchlings make their return
plover parents will fl ee their
nests when disturbed, hop-
ing to draw predators away.
They’ll fl utter down the
beach, pretending their wing
is broken: “Eat me! Eat me!
I’m easy to catch!” The gull
ignored them and pillaged 10
nests in a single day.
For snowy
plovers, a
fragile, fl uff y
kind of hope
By Katie Frankowicz
EO Media Group
Wildlife biologists discov-
ered another w estern snowy
plover nest at Nehalem B0ay
State Park over the Memorial
Day weekend.
It’s been a week of good
news for the tiny, threatened
shorebird. Last Wednesday,
the Oregon Parks and Recre-
ation Department announced
the fi rst hatchling in 50 years
in that area. Several days lat-
er three chicks hatched at the
Sitka Sedge Natural Area near
Pacifi c City.
They’ve come a long way
since 2015 when the fi rst nest
at Nehalem Bay State Park af-
ter conservation efforts began
in earnest there failed. When
that happened, wildlife biolo-
gist Vanessa Blackstone cried
on beach.
It was like a scene from a
movie, she says.
You know: “Noooooo ooo-
oooo!”
Though plover conserva-
tion efforts have been under-
way along the southern and
central portions of the Oregon
C oast since the 1990s, man-
aged N orth C oast sites like
Nehalem Bay are relatively
new. Biologists hoped that as
plover populations rebounded
elsewhere, the birds would
begin to search farther afi eld
for new habitat and return
to traditional sites up north.
Now — with an estimated
518 birds statewide and re-
cent successes at Nehalem
Bay — they can say with cer-
tainty that this is beginning to
happen.
The odds are stacked
against the Nehalem Bay
chick, and any others that
follow it. The hatchling is
roughly the size of two cot-
ton balls or a golf ball, though
getting bigger every day — a
small bird on a large beach.
But even if it doesn’t survive,
for Blackstone and others
who have worked to restore
snowy plover populations on
the West Coast, it is a fragile,
fast-moving, fl uffy kind of
hope.
“It means Oregon remains
Home base
COLIN MURPHEY/EO MEDIA GROUP
Signs clearly mark areas where shorebirds, like the threatened w estern snowy plover, might
be nesting in Nehalem Bay State Park. Wildlife biologist Vanessa Blackstone, left , scans the
beach looking for nests.
at the forefront of recovery for
this bird!” Blackstone, who
works for the Oregon Depart-
ment of Parks and Recreation,
wrote in an e mail after news
of the plover chick broke.
It means, she said, that
“not only did we pick the
right locations when selecting
nesting areas in the (state’s
h abitat c onservation p lan), it
also means our management
is working.”
Field work
A few days before the Me-
morial Day weekend, Black-
stone set out to locate the
hatchling.
Rangers restrict access to
the southern portion of the
4-mile-long sand spit that
makes up Nehalem Bay State
Park beginning in May and
continuing through the entire-
ty of the plover nesting sea-
son. Now with a confi rmed
hatchling on the beach, these
restrictions had become even
more crucial.
The park is located just
below Manzanita, a town of-
ten overrun with tourists in
the summer, and park rangers
were expecting a crowd over
the long weekend. Blackstone
wanted to know where the
chick was before the weekend
hit, the better to warn peo-
ple away from areas where it
might be feeding or resting.
She had a hunch that the
chick, now 2 weeks old and
very mobile, may have moved
northwards with its parent,
looking for food outside the
protected nesting area. Male
plovers look after chicks once
they hatch while females con-
tinue to mate and establish
nests.
Dangers
If you are on a sandy beach
littered with driftwood and
broken sea shells, everything
looks like a w estern snowy
plover: that tan stone, those
scattered puffs of sea foam,
the pile of twigs and dried
grass the wind just caught and
stirred.
Blackstone moved slowly,
shouldering a spotting scope
on a tripod. She started out
looking for tracks because
where there were tracks there
could be birds.
Plovers feed on small in-
vertebrates. As they forage for
food, they run in straight lines,
pause, look around, then dash
suddenly to the side to snag
prey. The distinctive, slightly
pigeon-toed tracks they leave
behind refl ect these sudden
starts, stops and right-angle
turns.
Last Thursday, Blackstone
found little evidence of plo-
ver activity at the southern
end of the beach where signs
warn people away from plo-
ver nesting areas. She turned
north towards Manzanita,
stopping every few steps to
scan the beach with her scope.
Sanderlings,
another
small, fast-moving shorebird,
scurried along the wet sand.
Up above the dunes, a crow
slid sideways on the wind,
head questing from right to
left. It sent a shadow rippling
over wave-prints in the dry
sand.
Predators haven’t yet
fi gured out that the spar-
row-sized plovers and their
even smaller eggs — and
now chick — are here, as far
as Blackstone can tell. Else-
where in Oregon, plover nest-
ing grounds are a buffet for
gulls, coyotes and corvids like
crows and ravens. Wildlife
biologists often sweep away
their footprints after checking
on plover nests to avoid lead-
ing predators right to them. In
California and southern Ore-
gon, the states and U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service have had
to consider lethal options in
controlling problem preda-
tors.
One w estern gull in south-
ern Oregon fi gured out that
But crows and gulls aren’t
the only issue.
Snowy plovers see danger
everywhere. A dog, sniffi ng
around and oblivious to a
nest — usually only a shallow
scrape in the dry sand — can
send parents scurrying. So
can a beachcomber wander-
ing among the dunes, or a
colorful plastic kite fl uttering
overhead .
“One person, one dog,
one kite, they’ll get over it,”
Blackstone said. But when
another person goes by a few
minutes later, followed by
another dog or another kite,
plover parents are constantly
hopping off eggs.
“So many nests fail be-
cause they get cold,” Black-
stone said.
“Certainly within the spe-
cies you see a range of toler-
ance for disturbance,” said El-
eanor Gaines, a conservation
biologist who works with the
Oregon Biodiversity Informa-
tion Center. The center has
tracked plover numbers since
the 1990s when they fi rst
became federally listed as a
threatened species under the
Endangered Species Act. The
center provides information
to the different state and fed-
eral groups involved in snowy
plover recovery efforts.
In Oregon, the beaches are
relatively remote. In Califor-
nia, plovers nest on beaches
heavily used by people.
“They rope them off (in
California), but the birds do
seem to tolerate more human
disturbance than we see up
here,” Gaines said.
Plovers have what biolo-
gists call “site fi delity.” Once
they successfully nest some-
where, they tend to come
back. It is part of what makes
news of the chick in Nehalem
so encouraging. If it survives
to adulthood, it too will return
someday.
North
Blackstone walked for more
than an hour, slowly zig-zag-
ging from where high tide had
deposited a chain of beach de-
bris then up to dry sand. She
paused to look for tracks or to
look through her scope, noting
other bird species, puzzling
over unfamiliar tracks.
Then: “Western snowy plo-
ver! I knew they were going to
go north.”
The adult plover was hard
to see unless it moved. Black-
stone pondered it through her
scope. A sudden movement at
the plover’s side made her do
a double take. Two birds? No:
The chick!
Minutes later, the parent,
spotting Blackstone and re-
porters from The Daily Asto-
rian, would be running back
and forth across the sand —
“Eat me! Eat me!” — and the
chick would have disappeared,
hiding somewhere nearby. But
for now, the gangly hatchling
covered in a patchy fuzz with
its long legs and useless “little
chicken wings” bobbed next to
its parent.
“Only 1,000 yards north
of where we want him,” Park
Ranger Ken Murphy would
later sigh when Blackstone told
him the news.
‘Guided luck’
The chick, and the new
nest, are not fl ukes.
“More like guided luck,”
said Chris Havel, associate di-
rector with Oregon Parks and
Recreation. “With some tweak-
ing of the ground and help from
visitors, a traditional breeding
ground can regain some of its
former attractiveness.”
“But you never can tell what
will happen next,” he added,
“and this could be the start of
a more wild, more natural Ne-
halem spit, or something could
interrupt the process and we’ll
need to reset our sights on next
year.”
The work they’ve done,
though, and the nests they’ve
seen “improves the odds.”
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