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Tern Jackpot!

This post is going to be brief cause I have to keep working on grant proposals to keep this research going... the results of our post-breeding tern chasing work are getting more and more interesting. (We and collaborators spent thousands of hours from late July - late September counting flocks and identifying individually banded roseate terns their "staging period" when they're resting and feeding in preparation for flight to South America).

Ben Carroll photo. Flock of roseate and common terns, Wood End flats, Provincetown, Sept 21, 2009.

So, although it will take many months for us to compile over 20,000 observations of colorbanded adult roseates from 11 observers... we were happily surprised to find some very interesting things, just from compiling our incidental observations of metal-banded fledglings. Some of the young terns that were produced on the breeding islands this year are given two metal bands, one of which is so-called "field readable" with a unique four-character combination of numbers and letters etched into the metal. With a good scope, good light, and close proximity to the flock, you can read these bands and figure out which breeding colony that tern came from (along with at least one adult still feeding it).

The exciting thing is, without even really focusing on this task, we made 760 observations of 422 individual fledglings, 13 of which were actually color-banded. More on those anomolies in a moment. Turns out we saw about 15% of the fledglings that were banded this year, coming from eight breeding colonies (from Great Gull, NY all the way to Country Island, Nova Scotia!)... we saw fledglings from any colony that banded more than five individuals! This gives even more weight to the notion that almost the entire population of northeastern roseate terns (there are about 6,000 total breeding birds in the population) come to the greater Cape Cod region to rest and feed before migrating to South America!

 
Fledgling roseate tern and colorbanded adult, Popponesset Spit. John Van de Graaff photo.

And the even more exciting finding... those colorbanded roseate chicks. Due to some short-term banding for purposes of estimating productivity, 14 roseate tern chicks got a combination of a single colorband and metal band or two colorbands at their breeding colony of about 24 pairs on Country Island, Nova Scotia. The Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) intended to catch the chicks and remove the bands, but they weren't able to find them due to dense vegetation. When colorbanded fledglings started showing up on Cape Cod beaches, we were initially confused... but then tracked down the source and were thrilled to let CWS know that we had spotted 13 out 14 of their colorbanded fledglings (93%)!!

We tripled their productivity estimate, AND learned a lot about where roseate terns go after they leave the breeding colonies. Some of these fledglings stuck to one staging beach for weeks on end, while others (with parent(s)) moved from beach to beach, staying in the region anywhere from one to 38 days. Exciting stuff! And more to come... also check out old posts for some more info and photos of masses of terns...

Terns found!

This post is a little late - it's the last day of September, and now almost all the terns we'd been chasing down have departed for... South America? The middle of the Atlantic Ocean? But about 10 days ago, they were still here. They were hard to find, and were not consistently in their usual resting spots where diligent CWP staffers went looking for them day after day (Nauset Marsh complex, South Beach in Chatham, Hatches Harbor, Provincetown). No, it wasn't until we branched out a bit and Ellen discovered almost all of them crammed into one very picturesque spot. For about three or four evenings from Sept 18-20, the tide was low just before sunset, and... they streamed in...

Common and roseate terns on the tidal flats at Wood End, Provincetown. B. Harris photo.

Eight of us went out to witness the spectacle on sunday night, Sept 20th, counting at least a total of 10,000 terns between the Wood End flats and the flats right inside Provincetown Harbor. The night before, Ellen had estimated 20,000 total terns, which is an incredible, literally breath-taking sight (even 10,000 terns wasn't too shabby!).

Terns streaming by the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown. B. Harris photo.

Some of the flocks we were able to view before darkness set in had good numbers of roseate terns (upwards of 30%, with dozens of colorbanded individuals IDed), and based on thousands and thousands of band observations this season, we're already beginning to get a picture of how important this region is to this endangered species. Here we are, looking at what could be the majority of the entire population of northeastern North American roseate terns in one field of view. When we estimate the total area roseate and common terns are using to rest during this post-breeding staging period from July through September, it amounts to only about 12 sq. km total. Not a huge area, and in some cases (for example, when you consider the area these 20,000 terns were packed into: about 1.25 sq. km...16 terns per sq. m!).

View through Zeiss scope of a small portion of the staging flocks at Wood End flats. B. Harris photo.

This is one of those spectacles that only happens at just the right moment... the right tide, the right hour, the right weather conditions after a long day of foraging out near Stellwagen Bank? Only an hour or so earlier, all of these flats were under water, and there was no space for a single tern to stand. How do they know to arrive just at the right moment? Why do they all come here? How do they communicate with each other to make the collective decision about whether to go to the Provincetown Harbor flats or the flats of Guyana? We probably won't ever know the answers. There are a lot of questions we may be able to answer with close to three thousand hours of data collection over the past few seasons, but we'll still only be scratching the surface. Sometimes it's nice to just step back and revel in the sheer spectacle of the moment and be thankful we live in such a special place.

The big walk

Yesterday I walked about 12 miles in sand carrying a 30 lb pack. And the day before, I walked at least the same amount. This is not a regular occurrence. In fact, it's something I've never done before (or have even come close to) but it was something I'd imagined doing for a long time. Four of us: Ellen Jedrey - CWP Assistant Director, Gabrielle Gareau - CWP South Beach Crew Leader, and Nuray Taygan - CWP Dead Neck Sampsons Island Crew Leader hiked from the north end of South Beach (Chatham) to South Monomoy Lighthouse at the south end of South Monomoy Island (no longer an island, now that it's connected to South Beach.)

  The big trek route.

It wouldn't have happened without the persistence and dedication (and insanity?) of Ellen Jedrey, who spent many nights in the lighthouse as a field assistant at Virginia Tech and USFWS several years ago.

Ellen looking for terns on the way down (note the large pack and large amount of water that the rest of us all consumed).

Aside from the novelty of making the trek, we had another purpose. Roseate and common terns are staging and we're trying to find them all. The remote tip of South Monomoy seemed like a good place to be if you wanted to rest and feed before migrating to South America, but were there any terns there? Well... on all of South Monomoy on yesterday morning (and we covered both ocean and bay sides), we counted a total of 17 common terns. And they were just flying by or foraging just offshore. Plenty of seals were resting at the tip of the barrier beach, and thousands and thousands of tree swallows were swarming and resting and feeding on the thousands and thousands of mosquitos that were feasting on our heads as we tried to sleep on the deck of the lighthouse. But no resting terns. At least not that day. Tracking down staging terns is very hit or miss.

The evening after the trek down, we grabbed the last bit of light to try to hike to the very tip, where terns might be. But the paths that used to be there were gone, light was fading and we couldn't get through the poison ivy (without, well, getting poison ivy). So we looked at the view and found some amphibians instead.

Fowler's Toad tucked in its sandy pit. I wanted to join him and rest in the sand after 7 hours of walking in it.

At daybreak I'd like to say we bounded out of bed and ran to the beach to find the elusive terns. But instead, we had pancakes... figuring we needed sustenance before the big trek back, had to clean up and pack, and none of us had slept much. Mosquitos were relentless, but waking up throughout the night to kill them didn't bother me too much, because each time I emerged to breathe or stop the incessant buzzing, I got a view of the intensely starry night sky - a rare view, especially in Massachusetts.

View from my porch bed.   

We were out on the beach by 8:30, and figured we could at least see tern tracks, if not the terns themselves. We saw neither. We did see 38 great egrets resting at the water's edge in the Powder Hole - incredible sight - especially after seeing none in the same spot the night before. Back to the lighthouse to get our stuff, say goodbye to the lighthouse, and off to the bayside to try to find terns on that side.

View from the light tower - South Monomoy is vast and isolated. Feels like stepping out of time.

The lighthouse is slated to get rehabbed, which it desparately needs. The last time any repairs took place was in 1988, thanks in part to Ted Kennedy, who helped secure a federal grant for restoration. Now federal stimulus funds are once again on the table to rescue this incredible relic of time. The current tower was built in 1849, with the first wooden tower in place in 1923. The irony is that were we to step back in time, we wouldn't see the seemingly untouched, vast swath of marsh, heath, and dunes. We would see a village occupied by fishermen. Change happens quickly, and Ellen, who spent many nights here in the early 2000s, was surprised by all the changes - the house (a mouse in the sink, a crumbling ceiling, a grimy kitchen and a water pump that no longer works), the landscape (fewer obvious paths, more invasive Phragmites, smaller - but still powerful - poison ivy vines).

 Nuray and Ellen looking for terns. No terns. (No sharks either).

We finally found some (only about 250 total) terns scattered from the northern end of South Monomoy to the South Beach "wasteland" bayside flats. Only three roseate tern adults, only one of which was banded, and not even with a complete band combination (missing middle bands... grrr).

On this trip, it wasn't so much the goal (terns) as the process (painful) and the experience (exhilerating) and the destination (lighthouse), oh, and having the goal of the "finish line" (including the promise of ice cream!). I would do it again in a heartbeat. 

 

Smiling through the pain. Gabrielle Gareau, Nuray Taygan, and me. Ellen Jedrey photo.

Tern time!

Well, things were supposedly winding down as of my last post (a month ago!)... but tern staging season has been in full swing ever since late July. Roseate and common terns leave their breeding islands around then, and through August and September, they hang out on various tidal flats, resting, feeding, teaching their kids how to feed (mostly just running away from them as the adolescents incessently beg at their parents). There's a lot to do before migrating to South America. A lot of fish to eat and stuff into the begging youngsters, a lot of energy to conserve in preparation for the long flight.

Because of the valiant efforts of Dr. Jeff Spendelow (USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center) with help from Carolyn Mostello and Mass Wildlife staff, over the past 5 years over 60% of the adult roseate terns that breed in this region now have colorband combinations that allow us to ID individuals through spotting scopes. And by identifying individuals, we can tell what proportion of the population is here, which sites they're using most, how often they're moving between sites, and even glean something about the risk they might face from offshore wind turbines.

 A.J. Hand photo. 4 colorbands and 2 different metal bands give each roseate tern a unique identity.

A total of 11 Coastal Waterbird Program staff and Jeff are currently spending hours on end staring into spotting scopes looking at tern legs. It's a great challenge, and especially when terns number in the thousands (flocks of 4,000-5,000 roseate and common terns are common!) - it's a fascinating way to spend the day. As individuals come and go, as flocks arrive and depart, are abundant or entirely absent from a site, the mind wanders and starts to ponder the tern brain. How are they making decisions about where to go? Who to go with? To spend the night on one beach one night and a different beach the next... clearly proximity to good fishing spots is key, but there are many group and individual decisions being made moment by moment that remain a mystery to us.

Becky Harris photo. Plymouth Beach, 2007. Staging flock of roseate and common terns.

 

We've only just begun to analyze data from last year's field season, and already it appears that well over 70-80% of the entire northwest Atlantic population of roseate terns is coming to Cape Cod to rest before migration. We know for sure that roseate fledglings are coming here from every breeding site where chicks are banded (fledglings have been identified from Nova Scotia, Maine, New York, in addition to the three local breeding colonies in Buzzards Bay). Just a handful of sites (some of the most important are in the National Seashore) are hosting almost all of the endangered roseate terns in this country... humbling to behold, and humbling to ponder.

Why did the plover chick cross the road?

"To get to the other side" rings true in this case. Barrier beaches didn't used to have roads down the middle of them, so if you nested on the ocean side, it was a perfectly good parental policy to bring your chicks to the bay side. Not so anymore, especially when the bay side and ocean side beaches are divided by one of the busiest and most important conduits for vehicles on Martha's Vineyard. This year, much to the horror of the CWP staff on the Vineyard, plover chicks crossed back and forth the busy State Beach Rd that runs the length of Joseph Sylvia State Beach, probably the most heavily-used public beach on the Vineyard.

John Van de Graaff (www.birdsbyjohn.com) took this series of a single plover chick running at Little Beach (Allens Pond). Nice beach habitat. Good for running plover chicks, unless asphalt.

The good news is, at least one of these road-crossing dare-devils fledged. It defies belief. They managed to beat the odds and dodge traffic to make to back and forth across the road several times. And the question remains - WHY did they cross the road? Well, there seem to be two main things that seem to drive parental plover thought processes: 1) I think there's better food on the other side and 2) there's something driving me out of my current habitat. It may have been a combination of the two in this case. When CWP staffers Liz Baldwin, Thera Lombardi, and Megan Nepshinsky came up with the idea to cordon off a section of beach to allow the chicks a larger space to forage without having to navigate around large numbers of beach-goers, it seemed to work. When they were given a bit more space, they stayed put.

That is, until the parents and one of the chicks that was able to fly jumped ship and FLEW over to the bay side, leaving the lone chick that was incapable of flight on the ocean side to fend for itself. And there he or she remains. We've got our fingers crossed that this >35-day-old chick soon gets enough food and develops the strength to fly, and is not tempted to walk across to join the family!

Lift-off! An adult piping plover at Allens Pond. John Van de Graaff photo (www.birdsbyjohn.com)

Today was the State Waterbird Cooperators meeting, the almost-end-of-the-season (even though we're still waiting for some chicks to fly) wrap-up meeting where all "plover people" in New England (except CT) get together and compare notes. Overall, 2009 is a mixed bag. The good news is, numbers of pairs of piping plovers appears to be up in the state, with a rough estimate (preliminary!) of 585 pairs - highest ever recorded. The bad news is, productivity was quite low this year, with a preliminary estimate of less than 1 chick fledged per pair on average (probably around 0.8). Mass Audubon-monitored sites faired only slightly better, with approximately 1 chick fledged per pair (a few still pending!) and a total of about 255 pairs protected.

Not every year can be as good as last year, when productivity was about 1.41 chicks fledged per pair state-wide - which explains why so many pairs came back to nest this year - as you might expect, productivity in the preceding year has been a consistent predictor of how many pairs will nest the next year. So perhaps next year the number of pairs will decrease a bit as we lose older adults and they're replaced with fewer first time breeders. Stay tuned for tern and oystercatcher updates later in the season...

Bah humbug

I must admit, July 4th is not my favorite holiday. I can completely understand peoples' desire to flock to the beaches on a sunny weekend, sit around a bonfire on a clear summer's night, watch some fireworks and celebrate the nation's birthday in a big way... especially after being stuck indoors while it rained for entire month. Unfortunately amidst the festivities, a piping plover nest on East Sandwich Beach was trampled by a drunken group that ignored the landowner's pleas not to tear down their fencing and walk through the nesting area. It's not to say that people can't celebrate, there just need to be some boundaries when it comes to sharing the beach with the birds.

 

 Crushed piping plover nest 1B on East Sandwich Beach. 7/5/09 Becky Harris photo.

This stretch of beach has 7 pairs of piping plovers in various stages of breeding, including six more fortunate broods of chicks that night. Unbelievably, a little over a week later, a total of 12 chicks fledged from this beach. How did they survive this...

 

Or this...?

  

Fireworks and bonfires East Sandwich Beach, July 4, 2009. Becky Harris photo.

This time we were lucky with several first nest attempts that hatched well before this night (all were over 20 days old by July 4 this year)... but in future years we need a little more than luck.

Losses and successes

Well, the benefit of a little time off to spend with family on Father's Day was outweighed by the dramatic losses brought by a devastating, rare, June Nor'easter. In many places we'd been doing pretty well with successful first nest attempts, but the astronomically high tides combined with driving wind out of the north and east meant complete nest loss on some north and east-facing beaches. We'd just completed all the tern censuses the week before, counting, for example almost 300 least tern nests on Sandwich Beaches. Almost all of them were washed away by the storm, with the exception of a handful of nests on Town Beach (at least one of which hatched a chick just after the storm!).

 

CWP Field Assistant, Ben Carroll, amidst symbolic fencing debris on a beach in Sandwich, June 26, 2009.

The scramble to clean up beaches strewn with signs and twine, assess the damage, and repair symbolic fencing was underway as soon as we could get back out after the storm. An unexpected expense, mid-field season - I had hoped we wouldn't have to buy MORE posts and twine in late June! Some beaches are dramatically different than they were before the storm... in Scituate, only the top foot or so of some posts remained visible above the newly deposited sand.

We're still assessing the chick losses after the storm, with some happy surprises, including 4 chicks that survived and reappeared after 8 days of apparent disappearance on Black Beach in Falmouth. The lesson... never give up! CWP Field Assistant Nuray Taygan discovered this entire brood of chicks back in the marsh after over a week of searching. Amazingly enough, the first piping plover chicks of the season fledged (flying over 50 ft) on Corn Hill Beach in Truro just post-storm on June 25, and a newly discovered nesting spot on Long Beach Pt in Wareham also saw successful fledging that day. Small victories keep us going...

Expect the Unexpected...

It's Father's Day, and hopefully all over Massachusetts father (and mother) plovers are doing a good job brooding their chicks, protecting them from wind and rain, keeping them warm and dry. CWP staff (myself included) are happy for a little rain on Father's Day... means we can spend a little guilt-free time with family, leaving plover families alone (we avoid monitoring in wet windy weather - our presence could mean a chick or nest is left exposed to the elements as we pass by).

Fred Atwood photo. Mom attempts to brood all four chicks, Ridgevale Beach, Chatham, 2008.

The past few weeks have been packed with tern censuses squeezed into the dry days, the first tern eggs hatched, and now some plover and oystercatcher chicks are close to fledging (a few chicks look to be just a couple days away from flight). The process is never routine, however. Here are just a few unusual finds from the past couple weeks:

1) On Spring Hill beach in Sandwich, two of the eggs hatched after their parents rolled them back into a new scrape after they were washed out by a high tide. Two chicks are running around madly trying to find food, no wiser to the trauma that they had experienced as eggs!

2) On another Sandwich beach, a pair of plovers is attempting to incubate six eggs instead of the usual four. Ben Carroll, CWP Field Assistant, suspected that a three-egg clutch was abandoned because he never saw any adults nearby after over a week of observations. Just when he was going to give up hope, a new egg appeared in the nest bowl... and another, and another. Not an easy array of eggs to incubate; the parents keep adjusting them and arranging them in new ways:

 

Six-egg piping plover nest, June 17, 2009, Scorton Neck, Sandwich.

3) An American oystercatcher pair nests on the South Shore of Massachusetts! I'm not aware of any record of oystercatchers actually nesting on this stretch of coast - they nest on the North Shore, in Boston Harbor, Buzzards Bay, and Cape Cod and Islands sites, but there had always been a big gap on the South Shore. But now, Duxbury Beach hosts a one-egg oystercatcher nest (as well as a handful of what appear to be non-breeding oystercatcher adults hanging out in the marsh). Not only that, but this pair did something very unusual... they moved their single egg several meters away from its original scrape into a new scrape. There was nothing obvious that motivated these birds to move their egg, they just appeared to prefer a new spot on their little stetch of cobbly beach. One never knows what is going on their bird brains...

The oystercatcher egg in its first location, Duxbury Beach, 2009. Scott Hecker photo.

4) The most incredible news of all... piping plover chicks can swim! Now, most small downy chicks of non-swimming species will swim in a pinch - usually to get away from a threat like a predator. We'd also had our suspicions about "mystery" chicks that appeared on beaches where no nests had been found... but until now, we hadn't seen it with our own eyes. A pair of plovers nested on Red River Beach in Harwich for the first time in recent history, the chicks hatched, and then promptly disappeared (somehow even making the local news, although chicks "disappear" due to predation all the time! http://www.wickedlocal.com/harwich/homepage/x313679517/Red-River-plover-chicks-succumb)

But then, on a regular patrol of Pleasant Street Beach, a site that supported a successful nesting pair of plovers last year (but not this year, so far), CWP Field Assistants Dave Israel and Will Caffry spotted a family with four young chicks. Sometimes we can distinguish among certain individual plovers because of the pattern, thickness, and darkness of the bands around their necks (not to be confused with leg bands - metal bracelets placed around birds' legs so that researchers can identify individuals). These bands are a natural part of the birds' anatomy - some have connected neck bands, some have thin neck bands, and we train our staff to draw the characteristics of individual pairs so that when they move around, they can have some hope of figuring out who's who. It paid off in this case, because Dave and Will knew their birds - the pair on Pleasant St Beach looked just like the Red River pair, and here they were with four chicks of the right age.

Piping plover with a "complete" neck band (not the parent of the swimming chicks), Allens Pond, 2009. John Van de Graaff photo.

It wasn't til a few days later that Will actually saw them swimming across, this time from Red River to Pleasant St... clearly the parents were leading their chicks back and forth. Maybe the appeal of twice as much coastline on which to forage was just too great. We have yet to get a photo or video of the chicks in action, but I'm still hopeful. The local paper had to revise their original story... this one was much more interesting.

http://www.wickedlocal.com/harwich/homepage/x702336931/New-home-for-plover-family

Many thanks to the Chatham Conservation Foundation for their support of our monitoring and protection efforts on Pleasant St Beach www.chathamconservationfoundation.org! Even if a pair didn't nest on their property this year, we wouldn't have figured out the mystery of the missing plover chicks if it hadn't been for the opportunity to thoroughly monitor that stretch of beach.

Children of the coast

So much for the idea of keeping up with this blog on a weekly basis... you can tell by my absence that there is A LOT going on in the plover world! The news is mostly good... we have chicks! Hatching has been happening everywhere in the past week and a half. Hooray for successful first nest attempts! Chicks that hatch now will have a good chance of getting off the beach by July 4th, making for happy plovers and happy people.

 Two-day-old piping plover chick, Ellisville Beach, Plymouth. John Van de Graaff photo.

With few spring storms, and minimal impact from recent high tides, we're off to a good start this season. Washovers due to high tides have been relatively rare this Spring, and in fact, for two nests on Sandwich beaches last week, eggs were washed out, only to be rolled carefully back into new scrapes by attentive parents! This is a phenomenon we've seen with piping plovers and American oystercatchers - always fascinating to see if eggs that have been through such a traumatic experience will then hatch. Also incredible to think about the drive to incubate - some plovers are incubating rocks right now, that drive is so strong.

This week we're in the middle of the official "census window" - trying to get a handle on the total number of pairs of piping plovers statewide. We're scrambling to try to get it done, and have already found some new nesting spots in the process. Then from June 5-June 20th we try to assess the nesting least tern population in the state, spending countless hours doing complete sweeps of tern colonies, counting every nest. It's a busy time, and if you see us holding hands in a big line on the beach, well... that's why. We are a friendly bunch, we CWPers...

  Least Tern census, Dead Neck Sampsons, 2007. Becky Harris photo.

Nest loss begins...

Well, just as soon as you start finding eggs, you start losing eggs. On tuesday (May 12) I had my first 2 nest losses on Squaw Island, Hyannisport, having just found the nests less than a week earlier... both were a bit mysterious, with no obvious predator tracks leading me to a culprit. Piping Plover Crime Scene Investigation is challenging... you often find multiple sets of predator tracks near and around nests, and it's easy to jump to conclusions; studies on other species have found that attempts to ID predators based on nest remains are incorrect over 50% of the time. So, it's not an exact science, but the more frequently we can check nests, the more accurate we're likely to be in figuring out what happened.

Empty scrape where nest 2A had been. You can see plover tracks all around it, a few old crow and canid tracks within a foot or two, but otherwise no obvious culprit.

CWP staff have been losing nests all week, and we've been running around exclosing all the nests we can, in order to stave off hungry predators. Exclosures are wire mesh 'cages' that can be placed around nests in certain locations, but we have to be very careful where we use these - they have to be checked daily to make sure there are no problems, that the birds can run freely in and out, and they shouldn't be placed in areas with dense vegetation or sloping habitat. There is the risk that adults will abandon their nests, or worse, get killed by predators at exclosures (harriers, for example, have been known to grab adult plovers through the mesh netting on top of exclosures). It's much worse to lose an adult from the breeding population than eggs, so it's extremely important that exclosures are done right and are carefully monitored.

Can you believe there's a nest in here somewhere? It wasn't easy to spot... I'm hoping no predators will see (or smell) it either. See below for nest location.

My depressing day of nest loss at Squaw was balanced with a find, a suprise four-egg nest (complete clutch) on the crest of a small dune, buried deep in vegetation. Exactly the type of nest that we'd never be able to exclose, but also the type that we wouldn't have to... hopefully. It was not an easy one to find, and the only reason I knew it was there was because the incubating adults ran down the side of the cliff every time he or she left the nest, leaving a little telltale path of tracks leading to the spot where the nest had to be...somewhere in there. The male scrambled out of the dense beach grass as I approached, confronting me head-on with what can only be described as outrage.

 Still can't see the eggs? I know. I couldn't either. That's the point. Good job birds!

See those speckled things on either side of the green blade of beach grass? Yup, cryptic, indeed. Not the best resolution photo, sorry.