Introduction The western snowy plover is a
threatened small shorebird, approximately the size of a sparrow. During the
breeding season, March through September, plovers can be seen nesting along the
shores, peninsulas, offshore islands, bays, estuaries, and rivers of the United States' PacificCoast.In Channel Islands National Park, it is a permanent resident on Santa
Rosa Island and is a summer resident on Santa Cruz Island. Owing to the species' dramatic decline, a
recovery program was developed and instituted in 2007 by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife service.
Quick
and Cool Facts
The snowy plover frequently
raises two broods a year, and sometimes three in places where the breeding
season is long.
The female deserts her mate and
brood about the time the chicks hatch and initiates a new breeding attempt with
a different male.
Young snowy plover leave their
nest within three hours of hatching. They flatten themselves on the ground when
a parent signals the approach of people or potential predators. They walk, run,
and swim well and forage unassisted by parents, but require periodic brooding
for many days after hatching.
The snowy plover performs
broken-wing displays to distract a potential predator away from the nest. By
acting injured the bird appears to be easy prey and the predator's attention is
drawn to the bird.
Plover nests are camouflaged and
are barely visible to even the well-trained eye.
Snowy
plover chicks are about the size of a person's thumb when they hatch.
Snowy
plovers have a unique way to catch a meal of kelp or wrack flies. Encountering
a mass of the flies on the beach, a plover runs through the cloud of insects
with its mouth open, snapping at them to catch them in mid-air.
Appearance Plovers
are small birds with long, dark or grayish feet and legs, a short dark bill,
large eyes, a rounded head, and long, narrow wings that end in a sharp point. These
birds have cryptic coloration. The color of their dorsal areas matches and
blends with their surroundings, making them well camouflaged and difficult to
see against the sand. They turn away from predators, sometimes crouching to
hide their darker head and breast markings. When the birds stop running they
seem to disappear, blending into the surroundings.These little birds are
sand-colored above and white below, with a narrow dark stripe on the forehead
and a dark stripe behind the eyes. They have two, small, dark, partial breast
bands and dark ear patches. In breeding season the distinctive markings are
darker in males than in females. In winter the difference in sexes is less
apparent.
Range Most western
snowy plovers that breed in California's Central Valley and the Great Salt Lake
migrate to California and Mexican coasts for the winter. During the winter
months they rest and eat to build up their fat reserves for the migration to
their summer breeding habitats. The California Pacific coast resident
population usually congregates on sand spits and dune-backed beaches. In more
urban areas they can be found on bluff-backed beaches.
Habitat In Channel Islands National Park, it is a
permanent resident on Santa Rosa Island and is a summer resident on Santa Cruz
Island. On the Channel Islands they forage in the wet
sand and amidst surf-cast kelp in the intertidal zone and in dry, sandy areas
above the high tide. In winter, snowy plovers are found on many of the beaches
used for nesting as well as on beaches where they do not nest, and on estuarine
sand and mud flats.
Feeding Snowy
plovers are primarily visual foragers, using the run-stop-peck method of
feeding. They forage on invertebrates in the wet sand and amongst surf-cast
kelp within the inter-tidal zone, in dry, sandy areas above the high tide, on
salt pans, on spoil sites, and along the edges of salt marshes, salt ponds, and
lagoons. They sometimes probe for prey in the sand and pick insects from
low-growing plants. Western snowy plovers have a unique way to catch a meal
of kelp or wrack flies. Encountering a mass of the flies on the beach, a plover
runs through the cloud of insects with its mouth open, snapping at them to
catch them in mid-air. Adults forage on invertebrates
primarily along the water's edge.
Reproduction The
nesting season extends from early March through September, with peak nesting
occurring from mid-April through mid-August. Their nests typically are shallow
scrapes or depressions on the ground on flat, open areas with sandy or saline
substrates, where vegetation and driftwood is sparse or absent. Plover
nests are camouflaged and are barely visible to even the well-trained eye. 7 Typically,
the plover lays three highly camouflaged eggs in the incubating process;this
takes about 28 days, with the females sit on the eggs during the day, the males
at night. To distract a potential predator away from the nest, the snowy plover
performs broken-wing displays. By acting injured the bird appears to be easy
prey and the predator's attention is drawn to the bird. The snowy plover
frequently raises two broods a year, and sometimes three in places where the
breeding season is long.The female
deserts her mate and brood about the time the chicks hatch and initiates a new
breeding attempt with a different male.
Snowy plover
chicks are about the size of a person's thumb when they hatch. They leave their nest within three hours of
hatching. They flatten themselves on the ground when a parent signals the
approach of people or potential predators. They walk, run, and swim well and
forage unassisted by parents, but require periodic brooding for many days after
hatching. Chicks reach fledging age about one month
after hatching.
Conservation
Status The Pacific coast population of the western snowy plover
was listed as threatened by the Fish and Wildlife Service on March 5, 1993. The
population has declined due to many factors. Recreational and other human
disturbance, loss of habitat to urban development, introduction of beachgrass and
other nonnative species, and expanding predator populations have all
contributed to a decline in active nesting areas and in the size of the
breeding and wintering populations. It is estimated that about 2,000 snowy
plovers may breed along the U.S. Pacific Coast and that there are 157 current
or historical snowy plover breeding or wintering locations along the U.S.
Pacific Coast (USFWS 2001).
Channel Islands National Park is one of the few locations
in southern California that still supports breeding and wintering populations
of western snowy plovers. In the 1990s Santa Rosa and San Miguel Islands had
both breeding and wintering populations, but numbers have declined
precipitously. A few birds also lived on The Nature Conservancy portion of
Santa Cruz Island. On Santa Rosa Island the birds inhabited about 16 miles of
coastline, while on San Miguel Island they were present on about 10 miles of
shoreline (USFWS 2001). The Skunk Point area on Santa Rosa Island is an
important nesting area and foraging area for juvenile and migrating plovers.
Forty to fifty percent of the nests in this area have been found on rocky
outcrops in the back dunes, about 490 to 980 feet (150 to 300 meters) from the
shoreline (USFWS 1995).
Much of the work done in the recovery and restoration of
the western snowy plover on the west coast was based on a plan developed by the
Pacific
Coast Western Snowy Plover Recovery Team.This plan was acknowledged and utilized in 2007 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in their
effort as the spearhead in the recovery effort. Much of the plan was
implemented by the California Department of Parks and Recreation.
A survey
was taken in May 2012 that found the overall numbers of western snowy plovers
on the west coast to be 1855, which was an increase from the initial recovery
program survey in 2005. It is also a
significant improvement over the population number of 1537, the number of
plovers found in 2007 when the restoration program began. However, the species
showed disappointing decline from a count of 1917 plovers in 2011.
