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| Piping Plover (digiscope) |
And not finding it. Reed's Road had mostly chickadees. A little trail across from the first large beach parking lot that I often find interesting birds on had nothing except 22 swans in the bay. Spizzle Creek was marginally more interesting; at least there were oystercatchers, a Peregrine Falcon on its igloo nest, and a Great Egret in the marsh (I was hoping for a Snowy or an early ibis) but it was barely worth the walk.
So, there was nothing for it, but to walk on the beach from A-23 south. The ocean was flat, with very few bumps that were birds and those were gulls. I saw about 10 Northern Gannets and enjoyed a few plunged dives. A duck here and there, 4 Common Loons. I was getting disgusted, thinking this was a stupid way to spend the day especially when I could be home watching a meaningless spring training game. Then, scanning the high part of the beach where the "beach buggies" drive I saw a little gray something dart into a tire track. I took the scope off my shoulder, focused in and there was my first Piping Plover of the year. My first thought was, "Now I don't have to go to Barnegat Light this summer and search in the heat for one." (I probably will go to Barnegat Light anyway, but I don't have to.)
A guy walking up the beach saw me looking into my scope and asked the natural question, "Snowy Owl?" I tried to be a good birding ambassador, so instead of saying I don't a #$$% about Snow Owls, I told him this was better! Here's an endangered species that may nest on this very beach. He looked into my scope, saw the light gray lump of feathers and shrugged. He then told me about all the photographers from Philadelphia who had been there a couple of weeks ago chasing after the owls. I withheld comment.
Later, on the way back, I passed a couple. I saw that the woman was actually holding binoculars (though they were more like opera glasses). Again, they asked about Snowy Owls, again I said I'd seen something better. I explained how these birds nest on the beach, how difficult their life was with predators (especially with the foxes on the beach that two people asked me if I had seen--I suppressed the "no feathers" reply) etc., but a little bird the color of the sand is not charismatic like a big owl that is featured in Harry Potter. As we walked along I saw an Ipswich Savannah Sparrow flush from the sand and move up onto the ridge of a tire track. "Another cool bird," I told them and explained that they only breed in a small area up north and how surveys are conducted to count them. "But it just looks like a plain bird," the woman said. "That's the fun of it," I said, "Knowing which plain birds are special," but I don't think they saw the fun of it. I showed them a Long-tailed Duck. "There's two," she said. I looked and saw that a Common Loon had surfaced and told her it what it was. Finally, that impressed her--a big water bird with a prominent bill and a name she recognized--"loon." I tried. Really, I tried.
A little Piping Plover, scurrying along the beach, seems so vulnerable that I start feeling sorry for it. But this is a tough bird, probably as tough, in its way, as any Snowy Owl. It migrates thousands of miles, it scratches out a nest in the sand, it protects that nest and somehow raises chicks and its numbers wouldn't be declining if it wasn't for us--it isn't the foxes that are the threat, it's that it wants to nest on beaches where we have other intentions. And the foxes (which are another charismatic species) wouldn't be such a problem either if they weren't fed by people who think they're cute. With these kinds of thoughts, by the time I got off the beach I wasn't feeling so joyful about finding my first Piping Plover of the year.
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| Piping Plover, hunkered down (click photos to enlarge) |
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