Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus)

Legal status in U.S.: endangered Legal status in WI: endangered 1986 numbers in WI: 1 Length: 7 inches Wingspan: 14-15 inches Weight: 2 ounces

Description || Breeding Biology || Distribution || History in Wisconsin || Current Status || Research and Management || What You Can Do || Further Reading || Endangered Resources Reports || Excerpt from the Animal Guide || Further Reading || Endangered Resources Reports

Description

Piping plovers are tiny shorebirds that inhabit sandy beaches where vegetation is sparse. Their pale sand-gray back feathers and white underparts blend well with their surroundings, making them difficult to see even by people with a trained eye. Plovers have a pale-orange, blacktipped bill and pale-orange legs. When in breeding plumage, they have a distinctive black stripe on their forehead and lower neck. In the winter, they lose these black stripes and their bill and legs become dark. Male and female piping plovers look alike.

Even though plovers are small and hard to see, they make their presence known by their clear, soft song. Piping plovers earned both their common and scientific names from their melodious "peep, peep, peep, peep-lo" song and their two-note alarm call, "peep-lo."

When feeding, both adult and young piping plovers run rapidly along the water's edge, then stop to pick up fly larvae, beetles, crustaceans, mollusks and other invertebrates.

Breeding Biology

Wisconsin's piping plovers spend the winter along beaches in the southern U.S. By mid to late April, they fly north to nest on our state's beaches and sandpits. Plovers are very site tenacious and return year after year to the same nesting territory. If humans also return to use the same strip of beach each year, as is often the case, the plovers' nests may be repeatedly destroyed and the birds will continually fail to rear any young.

Males arrive first, establish territories and defend them from other males. When females arrive several weeks later, the males begin their courtship displays. They try to attract a mate by flying in circles and figure-eights, and by dancing with tail and wings spread, while whistling and rapidly drumming their feet.

More than one pair of plovers will nest on the same beach, but pairs generally nest 100 yards or more from each other. Both the female and male make several nest scrapes in the sand. They use only one as a nest, however, lining it with pebbles, shells or bits of driftwood.

During mid-May, the female lays one cream-colored egg with black spots every other day until there are four in the nest. The eggs are well-camouflaged and are easily stepped on by unwary beachcombers. If plovers lose their eggs during the first half of the nesting season, they may relay. But if their eggs are lost late in the season, they do not nest again that year.

Both female and male incubate the eggs, which hatch after 27-31 days. The chicks are precocial; they spend only a few hours in the nest, waiting for their feathers to dry, then are ready to run. They leave the nest under the watchful eyes of the adults. Adults don't feed their young directly, but guide the chicks to good food sources, where the young feed themselves.

The downy young plovers have protective coloration similar to the adults. If an intruder appears, the adults call out to the chicks, who respond by freezing, lying flat and motionless on the ground. The chicks are almost impossible to see when they are still. The parents also may act as if they have a broken wing to draw the attention of an intruder away from the chicks. After 30-35 days, the young are ready to fly.

Only one in five piping plovers reaches the age of five years. Some may live longer, however, as evidenced by one bird that was banded, released, then recaptured 14 years later.

Please click button for a map
of the historic breeding range of the piping plover.

Distribution

Piping plovers inhabit shorelines of lakes, rivers and oceans. They breed along the western Atlantic Coast from Newfoundland to North Carolina, around the Great Lakes and on the northern Great Plains. In Wisconsin, the only breeding pairs in recent years have occurred along the shores of Lake Superior.

Plovers winter along the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, the southern Atlantic states, the Bahamas and the West Indies. They migrate alone or in small groups of five to six. Adult plovers leave Wisconsin in mid to late summer; juveniles often depart later.

A map outlining Pre-1977 and 1997 to Present Distribution is available.

Historically, piping plovers nested in Wisconsin, although exact numbers are unknown. From the late 1800s to early 1900s, wanton shooting of plovers for sport and the millinery trade contributed to serious population declines throughout North America. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 made it illegal to hunt piping plovers and their populations began to recover.

But plovers' problems did not end there. With increasing human use of beaches where plovers nest, populations again began to decline. By 1948, only one pair of plovers was known to nest in Wisconsin (in Door County). Although three pairs of plovers nested in Ashland County in 1978, only one pair successfully reared young. Of two pairs seen there in 1979 and 1980, only one produced chicks each year. In 1986, only one adult returned to a traditional nesting territory in Ashland County.

Current Status

Habitat loss and disturbance are the main causes of piping plover declines throughout the bird's range. "Beaches everywhere have been appropriated for, commercial and recreational development. Cottages and hot dog stands occupy the plover's former nesting sites, beach buggies crush its eggs and young, while even raking the beach for trash scoops up the eggs," (Graham, 1986). The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (exit DNR) reports an increasing incidence of plover nests being raided by unleashed and feral dogs and cats, as well as skunks and raccoons that are attracted to beaches by human development. Channelization and damming of rivers destroys sandbars where plovers nest, and rising water levels in the Great Lakes have eroded previous nesting beaches.

In 1985, only 476 pairs nested along the entire Atlantic Coast of the United States. The largest number of piping plovers (fewer than 1500 pairs) exists in the Great Plains, but these populations are endangered by dam projects and other water development plans. The 500 pairs of piping plovers once known to nest in the Great Lakes region dwindled to only 18 by 1986. The species no longer breeds in southern Ontario, where 100 pairs used to nest, or in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and now, Wisconsin. Populations in Michigan and Minnesota also have declined substantially.

In 1973, the piping plover was placed on the National Audubon Society's (exit DNR) "Blue List," a list of endangered bird species. Plovers were placed on Wisconsin's Endangered Species List in 1979 and on the Federal Endangered Species List (exit DNR) in 1985.

Research and Management

The DNR's Bureau of Endangered Resources (BER) conducts annual surveys of piping plover nesting habitat and records the number of individuals, nests and young. Recently, no plovers have nested in Wisconsin. The BER plans to manage and protect nesting habitat and, in an attempt to increase the number of plovers in the state, may place piping plover eggs in nests of related shorebirds that will serve as foster parents.

What You Can Do

Since one key to protecting piping plovers is to keep people away from nesting areas, the cooperation of shoreline owners and beach visitors is essential. Dogs, people and off-road vehicles (ORV's) not only scare the birds off their nests, which can expose eggs to boiling hot sun, but can accidentally step on or run over eggs and chicks. Such actions could wipe out Wisconsin's piping plovers in one afternoon. To ensure that piping plovers will continue to nest in Wisconsin and elsewhere, suitable nesting habitat must be protected. Each of us can assist the future of Wisconsin's piping plovers by avoiding areas where plovers are known to occur during the May 15- July 15 nesting season.

You also can help efforts to save piping plovers and other Wisconsin endangered resources by contributing to the Endangered Resources Fund on your Wisconsin income tax form or contributing directly to the Bureau of Endangered Resources.

Further reading

Cairns, W.E. 1982.
Breeding biology and behavior of the piping plover (Charadrius melodus) in Southern Nova Scotia.
Dalhousie Univ., Halifax, Nova Scotia. MS Thesis. 115 pp.

Graham, Frank Jr. May 1986
Cry of the Plover.
Audubon. 88(3):12-16. National Audubon Society, NY.

Matteson, S. W. 1981.
1981 status of colonial nesting birds and the piping plover (Charadrius melodus) on parts of the Wisconsin shore of Lake Superior.
Unpubl. ms. Wis Bur. of Endangered Resour. 18 pp.

Matthiessen, Peter. 1967.
The Shorebirds of North America.
The Viking Press, NY. 270 pp.

Excerpt from THE ENDANGERED AND THREATENED VERTEBRATE SPECIES OF WISCONSIN

Status: State Endangered (1979).

Occurrence: Two to three pairs occurred on Lake Superior's Long Island and Chequamegon Point from 1974 to 1983. Also formerly nested on Barker's Island and Wisconsin Point on Lake Superior. Piping plovers have been absent as nesting birds from the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan since 1948. Between one to four individual migrants have been sighted each spring. A map outlining Pre-1977 and 1997 to Present Distribution is available.

Aid to ID: Adults have a sand-colored upper body, white undersides, and orange legs with a white wing stripe and white rump. During the breeding season, they have black foreheads and breast bands with orange bills.

Habitat: Prefer open sandy beaches along the Great Lakes during breeding season. They frequent inland lake areas and ponds during migration.

Food Habits: Diet includes invertebrates washed up on shore, and grasshoppers and spiders present in grasses. in the Great Lakes region, chironomids comprise a large part of the diet.

Natural History:

Breeding:

• Clutch size: 4 eggs; laid in May.
• Incubation: 24-31 days, by both parents.. Young fledge 21-35 days.

Nest:

• Eggs are laid in scrapes in sand lined with small pebbles or shell fragments..

Management Considerations: Human activities, such as disturbance of birds and their nests by people, dogs and vehicles, and habitat destruction due to beach development, have resulted in declines of breeding habitat and reproduction on remaining habitats nationwide. Beach areas where piping plovers are present must be protected from human disturbance during breeding season. Predator enclosures built around nests may increase nesting success.