David, Entry #3, Holgate: Plover City

Holgate is a 3.5 mile stretch of pristine beach that is part of the Edwin B Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. Located at the southern end of LBI, Holgate is designated by the federal government as a Wilderness Area, which means no human activity is permitted. My lab has special permission from the government to include this area in its plover study. As a result I am one of only a few individuals who are lucky enough to ever see this beautiful area. The absence of humans means the habitat is near perfect with no disturbance, which means it's great for plovers. As the name of this post suggests, Holgate is one of the best plover nesting sites in NJ. There are 23 pairs this year, about a dozen of which are part of our study. The map above shows Holgate. Each marker represents a nest (the colors correspond to the nest status) and each yellow square represents a predator survey plot. We have a good sense of the locations of all the nests, but use GPS to find the predator plots in the field, although I'll go into that in another post.

Holgate is bitter-sweet. It's sweet because it's awesome plover habitat, but bitter because it involves a strenuous 7 mile hike through soft sand to access. However, the sweet far out ways the bitter. It's a pretty awesome place. Pictured above are the people from my lab. From left to right is Emily (biologist with Conserve Wildlife Foundation), Michelle (grad student from SUNY who is leading the study), and Kashi (biologist with the NJ Endangered Species Program). We caught a total of 14 chicks today from 5 different

 nests. Pictured to the left is photo taken from a GoPro on Kashi's head. It shows how we catch the chicks. Pillow cases are useful, because kind of like dogs, birds stop moving in dark spaces. However, in the strong winds of the beach they aren't always effective. In this case the chick escaped the pillow case but ran right into my hand. Catching chicks is risky and we need complete focus. One wrong move could kill a chick. You can see in the photo below how we split up to catch all the chicks at once. Emily and Kashi (foreground) are chasing one and Michelle and I (background) are getting the second chick. Look closely and try to find the chick. It blends in very well with the sand!

One of the efforts to this study is to learn where chicks go after fledging (being able to fly) and what predators are taking chicks. Attaching radio transmitters to their backs (pictured left) is one of the many ways we collect data that will help to answer those questions. We can actually figure out what type of predator took a chick (as sad as it is) by the speed at which the dead chick is carried away (using the transmitter). By understanding the types of predators that pose the biggest threat we can better protect this species in the future.

Our work may seem a bit comical from the chick capture photos, but it's serious business. Since piping plovers are endangered we cannot make any mistakes. The lives of these birds are literally in our hands. There are some people who think banding birds is bad and do not like what we do. We know that catching the chicks does not negatively effect them (we've been chick catching at Holgate for weeks and haven't lost a single one yet). However, in order to save this species we need to know what's wrong. Banding birds is an essential part of solving this issue, it allows us to calculate survivor-ship among other things. That's all for now, thanks!