2017 is Record Year for Great Lakes Piping Plovers

I once spent a week with piping plovers.

Great Lakes Piping Plover with colorful leg bands

This small shorebird is endangered, so the population is monitored during nesting season. 

I volunteered to help monitor the population nesting on North Manitou Island as part of my 

1,000-Mile Great Lakes Island Adventure.

Piping Plover on the edge of Lake Michigan

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At the lowest point in the 1980s, the population of this diminutive bird had dwindled to just 13 nesting pairs.

Scoping to identify individual plovers

Keeping track of the birds was a meticulous and difficult task. Each bird has a unique set of colorful bands on its legs and that code had to be deciphered in order to know the identity of each individual bird.  

Piping Plover nest 

Putting a protective cage around nests is the best way to keep predators from stealing the eggs.

Protective netting around a nest

2017 was a milestone year for these little birds as a record 76 breeding pairs were recorded this summer.

And, it was the first year that this bird nested on all five Great Lakes since 1955. The Fish and Wildlife Service called this "a remarkable development for the recovery program."

Nesting areas are restricted and protected

These little birds still choose Michigan's Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (including the Manitou Islands) as their primary nesting site. This year a record 41 pairs nested there.

Tiny plover tracks

Learn more about this record year HERE.

Pipers-a-Ploving

One of the components of my new adventure

[A 1000-Mile Great Lakes ISLAND Adventure]

is to explore and take part in research projects 

on Great Lakes islands.

In July, I had the privilege of assisting

 with the conservation of the endangered 

PIPING PLOVER.

This diminutive shorebird has been dwindling in numbers due to loss of habitat and increased predation.

The majority of the Great Lakes population of piping plovers nests in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

This year there were nine nests on North Manitou Island

 and one on South Manitou. 

Male piping plover on South Manitou Island

I spent three days on South Manitou watching for the nesting pair there and their chicks.  

Then, I went to North Manitou Island to assist the naturalist Alice Van Zoeren in keeping track of the population there.

Dimmick's Point is closed during nesting season

Using the big scope to find

and identify the little birds

Naturalist, Alice Van Zoeren, near a nest exclosure

Since this bird is endangered, there is funding in place to help restore their numbers. One of the most effective tools researchers have is to identify the nest early and protect them from predators with an exclosure (called that because its function is to keep things out). Adult birds can get in and out to take care of the nests, but predators cannot get at the eggs. 

This intervention alone has increased the hatching success from ~30% to over 90%. Researchers will also take steps to collect any eggs that are abandoned and transport them to a biological station in Pellston -- run by the University of Michigan -- where eggs are incubated and chicks taken care of until they can be released into the wild again.

This is a piping plover nest (no eggs)

Dimmick's Point on North Manitou Island

Watching over the piping plovers was fascinating, difficult work.

The full story of my island adventures will be in my next book:

A 1000-MILE GREAT LAKES ISLAND ADVENTURE

There are three birds in this shot. Can you find them all?