Time flies. I find it hard to believe, but the first brood of piping plover chicks that hatched on Winthrop Beach is already due to fledge next week (they'll be 25-days-old and officially fledged according to the state on June 15th, but we'll make sure they can fly at least 50 ft before we rest easy). The brood of oystercatcher chicks nearby is also due to fledge soon (although oystercatchers take at least 35-40 days to be able to fly).
Ted Bradford took this beautiful photo of one of the three American oystercatcher chicks that are almost ready to fledge from Yirrell Beach point in Winthrop. This photo was taken when the chicks were much younger - only a few days old most likely.
The fact that a few broods of plover and oystercatcher chicks are due to fledge next week is cause for celebration - mid-June, and they're already successful and able to escape predators. For those broods of chicks on busy beaches come July 4th, this is what we hope for. They can depart these beaches early and fencing can be taken down on some sites that don't have nests or chicks anymore. Where these first early nest attempts are successful, we avoid the inevitable conflict that comes on the busiest weekends of the summer when bonfires, fireworks, and crowds of people can disturb and even destroy nests and chicks.
So why do I feel an uneasy, slightly queasy feeling when I think about sending "our" chicks off into the world of flighted adulthood? Very simply, the biggest oil spill disaster in the country's history. Although most piping plovers and oystercatchers will remain on local beaches for weeks or months from now, inevitably some will depart for the Gulf Coast and Florida, and there's no way it will be cleaned up in time. We know large concentrations of wintering plovers and oystercatchers spend time all along the Gulf. How do we face the fact that all of our hard-won successes on breeding beaches might be wiped out in an instant, as birds migrate and flock to their familiar beaches, only to find them covered in oil and their invertebrate meals tainted and smothered?
I'm sure many people feel this same horrified, helpless feeling, lying awake at night worrying about the future of this precious ecosystem. I can't even imagine what it's like to be there now, trying to protect the sensitive nesting islands and beaches that are being used by wading birds, pelicans, Wilson's plovers, and so many others. We can't forget how connected we are through our own breeding migratory birds, making the long-term outcome even more nightmarish and enormous in scale.
One tiny consolation is the knowledge that at least some of "our" plovers and oystercatchers won't go to the Gulf. If they are faithful to their wintering sites, we can only hope that the plovers banded in the Bahamas last winter will return there this winter. We now have 13 Bahamas-banded piping plovers on breeding sites in Massachusetts (Welfleet, Orleans, Chatham, Dennis, Harwich, Aquinnah, Sandwich, and Ipswich). An event like this is a reminder of the value of having banded birds in such an intensively monitored population - 26 total individuals have been identified so far, from North Carolina to Nova Scotia. Knowing these individuals and being able to track them beyond this one year should at least help us assess the impacts of this terrible disaster on the entire threatened population.
This is one of the sites where Peter Doherty and Sidney Maddock banded piping plovers in the Bahamas. Just the kind of flats they love to flock to - we can only hope they'll return and these sites will remain unoiled. Sidney Maddock photo.
Comments