Snowy Plover Update - May 20, 2019

May 24, 2019 Posted by: Matt Lau

Overview

Hello everyone! I'm excited about the start of the docent season and so thankful to have you contributing to the conservation of this threatened species. As I've said before, the success of any conservation program is dependent on an educated and knowledgeable public; your work in spreading awareness of western snowy plovers is just as crucial as the monitoring and management that biologists are undertaking across the Pacific coast.

Snowy plovers in Point Reyes are facing a tough year: there's an atypical uptick in nest predation pressure from common ravens and the late winter storms have hammered beach habitats, subsequently decreasing the amount of available nesting area and wiping out a couple of nests. So far, we have lost seven nests due to common raven predation. That's 64% of failed nests this year (we've lost a total of eleven nests so far). For comparison, we lost a total of twelve nests to ravens during the entirety of the breeding season last year.

Despite some of the bad news, we have reasons to be hopeful about the next few months! Plover reproductive success tends to be much lower than the second half of the breeding season. Furthermore, we still have three more months in the breeding season! Lastly, we have a nest, located south of North Beach parking lot, projected to hatch later this week, along with two others the week after! These will be the first nest hatches of the season.

If you have any questions, please feel free to let me know via email. Thank you so much, again, for all your help!

Current Stats

  • 14 nests so far this season
    • 3 active nests
    • 0 hatched
    • 11 failed nests
  • 0 chicks fledged
    (but still a little early in the season

Check out this well hidden Kehoe nest! Sometimes plovers will decide to use native Lemma beach grass to camouflage their eggs.

Three small buff-colored eggs with black spots lying on sand surrounded by long blades of grass.

However, camouflage doesn't always work. A few days after this photo was taken, the nest was depredated by a common raven.


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Point Reyes, Point Reyes National Seashore, bird, birds, plover, plovers, snowy plover, snowy plovers, western snowy plover, western snowy plovers, Charadrius nivosus, Charadrius nivosus nivosus



Last updated: May 31, 2019

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