Record Plover Nesting Season on Sakonnet Beaches

It was a record breeding season for Piping Plovers on Sakonnet Beaches, according to the Nature Conservancy.

At six local Rhode Island and Massachusetts beaches, 31 pairs of plovers fledged a total of 67 chicks. It was the highest number of adult birds and fledglings recorded since the Conservancy began managing beach habitats for piping plovers in the Sakonnet in 1989.

The results were particularly strong at the Conservancy’s Goosewing Beach Preserve and the privately owned Briggs Beach, which combined to produce 61 fledglings. The count was a significant increase from the previous season, when 47 chicks fledged, and up sharply from years prior to 2012, when the two beaches rarely combined to produce more than 20 fledglings in a season. A fledgling is defined as a chick that attains the ability to fly, usually around 25 days after hatching.

“It has been incredibly gratifying and inspiring to see such a jump in the number of plover chicks,” said Terry Sullivan, Rhode Island state director for The Nature Conservancy. “It demonstrates what we can accomplish together with an engaged and supportive community, and gives us real hope for the long-term recovery of a federally threatened species,” Sullivan continued.

The Conservancy attributes the plovers’ recent success to a number of factors, including the actions of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which overwashed the dunes to create new nesting flats of sand and gravel. Other reasons include a reduction in the loss of plover eggs and chicks to predators, fewer nests flooded by Spring tides and storms, the removal of the invasive common reed (Phragmites australis) which expanded feeding habitat, and the impact of the Conservancy’s ongoing public outreach and education programs at Goosewing’s Benjamin Family Environmental Center.

Conservancy staff and volunteers are a steady presence on the Sakonnet’s beaches during the plover nesting season. Starting in mid-March, the Conservancy watches for birds arriving from their southern wintering grounds, locating nests using a federally approved field observation protocol. Symbolic fencing is erected around known plover nesting areas, and protective wire mesh exclosures are installed around each nest.

This year the Conservancy experimented with innovative methods of discouraging two common predators, herring gulls and eastern coyotes. Both had shown increased activity at the start of the 2015 season. In May, the arrival of river herring seeking to return to the ocean from Quicksand Pond concentrated gulls on a small section of Goosewing Beach. The gulls often perched on the plovers’ protective wire exclosures, causing visible stress to the adult birds as they incubated their eggs. Staff prevented the gulls from landing on the exclosures by placing wire spikes around the top of the perimeter of the structures.

At Briggs Beach, nest cameras showed that coyotes were frequent visitors to the nest exclosures early in the season, and may have killed an adult plover. Conservancy staff attempted to deter the coyotes by hanging long mesh bags filled with human hair on the exclosures. The bags of hair, contributed by a Supercuts salon, introduced a human scent in an effort to discourage the coyotes from approaching the nests. While other factors may have been involved, only one coyote was detected at an exclosure after the bags were installed. Both methods were approved for practice by the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) and may be studied further in 2016.

Along the Atlantic coast, piping plovers have been listed as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act since 1986, when about 800 breeding pairs remained. The USFWS Recovery Plan for piping plovers requires comprehensive management in order to achieve the goal of 2,000 breeding pairs, producing 1.50 fledged chicks per pair per season, sustained over 5 consecutive years. In 2015, the six Sakonnet sites had a productivity rate of 2.16 fledged chicks per pair. The Atlantic population of piping plovers currently numbers just below 1,800 breeding pairs.

The Nature Conservancy monitors six active plover nesting grounds in Little Compton, RI and Westport, MA: Goosewing Beach Preserve, Briggs Beach, Fogland Marsh Preserve, Richmond Pond, Elephant Rock Beach, and Acoaxet Point. The plover restoration project is funded with grants from the RI Department of Environmental Management, the USFWS, the Wilson Conservation Trust, and many private contributors to the Conservancy’s Goosewing Beach Preserve.

In 2015, the grant funds were matched by 560 volunteer hours that served as in-kind contributions. These volunteer hours not only get the work done, they make it possible for Conservancy to obtain state and federal support for this effort. Volunteers install and remove symbolic fencing and exclosure wire, walk the beaches to monitor plover nests and chicks, remove litter, and staff the Benjamin Family Environmental Center at Goosewing Beach.

Photo courtesy: Geoff Dennis