(WJET/WFXP/YourErie.com) — Love seems to be in the air this summer, and that’s good news for the Great Lakes plovers.
For the first time in more than 70 years, two pairs of Great Lakes plovers have nested and successfully fledged five chicks from Gull Point in Presque Isle State Park. That’s big news, said Sarah Sargent, executive director of Erie Bird Observatory.
“We’ve had one pair at a time since 2017,” Sargent said. “The first year (2017) we had two pairs, but one of those nests was not successful because the chicks never hatched due to the high water.”
From one pair to two pairs for a total of five chicks? That may not sound like impressive math to some, but think about the shorebirds’ troubled past before judging the small numbers.
The federally endangered Great Lakes plover once had a population of 500-800 pairs with birds spotted on each of the Great Lakes. But by the late 1980s, the population had dropped to 11-14 pairs, according to the Great Lakes Piping Plover Conservation Team website. Then the pairs were only spotted in Michigan in Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.
It would take more than 60 years between sightings of a pair of Great Lakes plovers at Presque Isle State Park. They have returned every season since 2017. This year two couples showed up. They are the only couples on Lake Erie, and they are in Erie’s Presque Isle State Park. The birds are banded and tracked.
“We’ve had the same male breeding bird since 2017. The second male is the progeny of the first year male,” Sargent said. “There aren’t that many in the world, and we have quite a few here, so that’s what’s exciting.”
To explain further, Papa Bird laid down his roots, and now the babies are coming back to stake their own claims in Erie.
And that didn’t just happen. The Erie Bird Observatory, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the Pennsylvania Game Commission, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, and the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program have all joined forces to the population. Locally, Great Lakes plover nests in Presque Isle State Park are protected to keep out predators. Areas are blocked from visitor traffic to leave undisturbed beach areas for breeding. And the vegetation control is almost constant to maintain an open sandy beach.
“This is where they come to raise their chicks, so it’s a really important area for them,” Sargent explains.
If we count all the birds this year, including the newly fledged birds, there are less than 200 plovers in the Great Lakes (including about 70 breeding pairs). That’s total. Worldwide. And that is counting the newly fledged birds. After the perils of winter travel south for the winter and winter itself, plus predators, that population is expected to drop to about 150 birds in total by the spring, Sargent said. But that’s an improvement from where the population was in the 1980s, and here in Erie, it’s great news for the Erie Bird Observatory.
“It’s hopeful — it’s always good to get more birds. With any kind of conservation and restoration effort, we want to see population growth,” Sargent said. “We think there is room for additional flocks at Gull Point and other parts of the park. We’re hopeful we’ll see increases. We don’t know exactly how much, or what the local carrying capacity is, but we’re trying to get more of them to settle in and raise chicks.”
For those interested in helping the birds, Sargent said the best thing people can do is respect the restrictions at Gull Point.
“Don’t land your kayak there. Don’t go beyond the rope,’ she said.
There are opportunities to volunteer locally at the Erie Bird Observatory to help the birds too. In the spring they need help setting off the breeding beaches and in the autumn they need help removing the ropes.
Interestingly, the Great Lakes plovers hibernate where people from the Great Lakes states vacation—mostly in Florida, but many in South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. Some reach as far south as the Bahamas, others to Cuba. One has even been reported in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Sargent said people can help the Great Lakes plover population by looking for the birds while vacationing in those areas and reporting the color bands. That said, the birds still need open beaches and plenty of space.
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“They’re very tied to open beaches, and that’s where people like to recreate,” Sargent said. “It’s good to understand that we need to share those beaches with the birds that depend on them, and let them rest when they need to rest, and not flush them all the time by letting their dogs run after them.”
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