David, Entry #5, Fourth of July Madness

While I was very excited for the 4th since my birthday happens to be on the 3rd, everyone I work with dreads the day. The Fourth is the one day that all humanity at the shore seems to go crazy in a "independence 'Merica" kind of way that leads to people getting drunk and doing stupid stuff on beaches. If they did this in a vacuum all would be fine, I guess, but they don't, so all the stupid things people do during the holiday haze negatively impacts plovers. Each biologist I work with gets assigned a segment of beach to patrol to call the police if anyone is disturbing the plovers. While everyone else in this country is celebrating, these very dedicated biologists are out late into the night protecting birds. I commend them for their dedication. At Belmar a group of guys decided to set a box of firecrackers off mere feet from a colony of terns. At North Brigantine a guy decided to drive around the vehicle barrier and do donuts on the beach, tearing up and destroying sensitive habitat. We also lost chick the day he illegally drove on the beach, so we highly suspect he ran it over. All across the state biologists reported horror stories like this of arrogant people harming wildlife in the name of "freedom." I'll quote spider man by saying, "with great power comes great responsibility." Sadly, the vast majority of people living at the Jersey shore seem to ignore the responsibility part. They destroy the environment they live in and then wonder why their house is flooded during storms. Our earth is deeply connected. You cannot change one thing without changing many many others. In response to the person who drove around the vehicle barrier at North Brigantine, we moved the vehicle barrier a quarter mile further down on the beach. Many town residents drove up to us as we were doing this and very vocally expressed their anger. Dealing with the general public is a very stressful and frustrating part of my work, but it's very important.

Pictured above is the vehicle barrier we built. This took about 2 hours of hard work. The barrier is created by putting large cedar posts in the sand in intervals smaller than the width of a car. Yellow cord with orange flags is strung across. Signs are put on the posts that say "endangered species area, keep out!" 

As I've mentioned in a previous post, studying endangered species has its ups and downs. There is a strong emotional component that has slowly been developing in me. Last week it really seemed to hit me. We were re-capturing chicks at Holgate. We like to give all of our plovers names that we use in the field. The parents of this particular nest are Ross and Paula. The two chicks were Tuna and Noodle. However, when we got to the nest site Emily said something along the lines of, "we need to catch Ross' chick." I really didn't think anything of it until I had Tuna in my hand and realized Noodle was missing. I looked in the cat carrier we put the plovers in while we process them. Empty. Noodle had been taken only a day or two prior by a predator, yet the week before I held Noodle in my hands. I looked down into my palms as if Noodle would suddenly appear, unharmed. I could hear the trill coming from her in my memory. I could see her squirming in between my fingers. Well, I guess that's the whole point of my work: to better protect plovers in the future. If anything, it served as motivation. We work in some pretty bad conditions. There are thousands of insects that constantly bite us all day everyday. We've been caught in a few thunderstorms on the open beach with metal equipment, very very scary, especially because a lighting bolt hit the ground about 20 feet away from us the other day. One thing I've noticed about the people I work with is their extreme devotion to these birds that allows them to work through these tough circumstances. I too am developing such motivation. 

Since I've talked about two sad topics on this post thus far, I'm going to end on a happy note. Enjoy the following pictures of adorable plover chicks! 

Meet the Harry Potter nest! Their names are Serius, Severis, Hedwig, and Dobby (not pictured). We didn't realize until after the fact that we named them all after characters that die...Hopefully there will be some reverse psychology with the predators and they will all live! 

Chicks snuggling with their dad may be the cutest thing I've ever seen! Notice the nano tag on the chick to the far right. That allows us to track the birds 24/7. It's pretty cool technology.