PULASKI How does life face the onslaught of a force as powerful as death, totally unnecessary death? Coronavirus is schooling us in that question now, and we are a powerful force in ourselves. But, how does a little bird face it? A five-inch, four-ounce, little thing against all of nature and the power of man. A little life that 90 years ago numbered 1,000 pairs, but today only numbers 64. How does a little bird stand up to that?

Claire Nellis is 26, a Pulaski native, a 2015 graduate of Paul Smiths College majoring in wildlife sciences and fisheries and presently the Piping Plover Project Coordinator for the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historical Preservation on a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to save that little bird, the piping plover, a tiny shorebird, somewhat similar to the sandpiper, that has been decimated to the point of near-extinction, earning it an inglorious spot on the federal endangered species list, here on Sandy Island Beach, the only place in the state it has returned to make its stand against annihilation. And Claire Nellis, and an impressive array of others, are here to help it make that stand.

Just as the plovers have returned to Sandy Island Beach, Claire Nellis has returned to her hometown. For the last five years, shes been far from home, working always with wildlife, in Missouri for three years working with prairie chickens and turkeys and before that, in Idaho with owls. Now, since May 21 of this year, shes back.

I grew up in Pulaski, she said, and I kind of took the uniqueness of the beaches that we have for granted. I didnt realize how rare they were. And its really an amazing ecosystem. Its fragile and resilient in lots of ways. Its changed a lot over time. Im thrilled to be part of their story of recovery here, and its great to be working on conservation in my hometown.

The plovers, she said, returned to Lake Ontario in 2015 at Lakeview Wildlife Management Area. A local birder spotted one and couldnt believe their eyes, because theyve been missing for 30 years. They notified DEC and let them know. And then in 2016, there was a pair that nested at Sandy Island Beach State Park, which is where I work, and another pair nested at Lakeview Wildlife Management Area, which is just north of the park, in the same habitat. So, since they were there, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service got involved as a federally endangered bird. The federal agency stepped in. Then 2017, there were prospecting adults (plovers) that checked out the area, but it was such high water, they unfortunately werent able to nest. And then, the Piping Plover Project Coordinator position, which is the position Im in now, started in 2018. Alivia Sheffield filled that position the first two years, and she did a lot of really phenomenal work, a lot of the beginning groundwork of monitoring them and building relationships with people out at the beach and doing a lot of outreach and education. Ive benefited a lot from all of her hard work.

The advent of that one nesting pair was, of course, a major development and defining moment in the nationwide work to bring the piping plover back to numbers representative of a healthy population. But just as one swallow does not a summer make, one pair of piping plovers does not signal the end of their plight. They are a fragile little bird, and it takes a lot of the right conditions to see to it there will be more of them.

Theres still only one pair nesting here unfortunately, Nellis said. The first year, in 2016, they lost their nest due to fox predation, and then in 2018, to help compensate for that, they were able to put up a nest exclosure, metal fencing, kind of like chicken wire, but large enough that the plover can get back and forth through but a fox or a raccoon wouldnt be able to. Its probably about five or six feet across, she explained, and it goes all the way around the nest, and it has a top layer to it as well, so that they (predators) cant just climb over.

That helped, and the plovers have been fruitful and multiplied. In their own rather humorous way, the pair comes together, seemingly for life, in a courtship ritual Nellis described.

The male actually helps with nest brooding and care, she said, and he will lay his belly on the ground and use his back legs to kick out a scrape. Its really just a little indentation in the sand. And then the female will watch him do that and come along and sit in it and either approve or more often, disapprove. Once they pick a scrape that they like, theyll line it with shells, and then just lay their eggs right in that. They usually lay four eggs.

Im not sure what her criteria are, Nellis said of the female plover, but he will often make many scrapes before she decides which ones the best. Its just part of their courtship. I dont know if its the placement on the beach or how deep he scrapes it or what, but sometimes its right, and usually its not.

After that, the pair stays together, at least in a sense, more like a married couple that takes separate vacations. Weve had the same pair, and they have individual bands that mark them, so we know whos who. So, the last three years, weve had the same adults nesting at Sandy Island.

Then comes the turn in the weather, and the plovers, who fly very little while nesting and living at Sandy Island Beach, fly long distances, separately, to the warm south.

They migrate south anywhere from North Carolina to the Bahamas, but primarily in Georgia and Florida, Nellis said. Theyll go to very similar habitat of the open beach where they can run down to the shoreline and eat invertebrates and then run back up into dunes for protection.

They migrate very long distances, so, they are good flyers, but theyre also good at walking. Their anatomy allows them to mostly be running on the ground rather than exerting the effort to fly everywhere.

While migrating, she said, they do stop over at beaches along the way. So sometimes well get reports that our female, shell leave our beach up here in Pulaski and then stop at a beach in Pennsylvania and feed for a day or two to refuel. And then shell continue her way south.

They all migrate separately. The female typically leaves first, and then, the male will leave after, and then the chicks will migrate.

So, the adults will leave, and the chicks will stay and continue feeding and growing and practicing flying for a little while before they take off south. Amazingly, they know where to go. And often theyll wind up in similar areas, Nellis said. Theres been research thats shown they can end up even within kilometers of each other. And they dont necessarily winter together either. They might not meet up down there even if they happen to be on the same beach, its not like theyre spending quality time together. Then they migrate north again and meet up sometimes hours or days apart at the same beach.

Sometimes theyre in different states (during the winter), Nellis continued. I think our pair, we havent seen the male, and the female was spotted in Georgia, and one of the chicks was spotted in Florida.

And then they individually head back north about the same time and meet up back at the same beach.

Our pair has done that three times, Nellis said.

Of course, you cant monitor and care for these little creatures and leave them as just anonymous blobs of feathers. So, they name them.

Theyve all got names, Nellis said. The first year that the male and female came they got named Aragorn and Arwen, and then their chicks all had Lord of the Rings-themed names too. 2019, they went with Star Wars-themed names, so they named the chicks Chewie, Yoda, and Leia. It was pretty exciting because Chewie was spotted down in Florida, and they reported that to us, and then she attempted to nest in Canada near downtown Toronto at a beach, and she stopped back over at Sandy Island Beach on her way south, July 4th, of all days, busy day. Thats the first time weve had a chick return to the habitat at Sandy Island. Even though she didnt attempt to nest, just stopping over was good to see her.

The chicks hatched June 14 this year, and thats about average. Ninety percent of chicks hatch between June 3 and July 14. Im glad that they successfully fledged and have officially migrated. The days are already starting to get short, and Im not sure why shore birds tend to migrate sooner than song birds, but evenings are starting to get colder, and they just head out as soon as theyre able. The adults arrived in early May. The female left July 10, and then the male left July 13. We had two chicks successfully fledge. This year they were named Fleetwood, Buckingham, and Stevie Nicks. Unfortunately, we lost Fleetwood before the female even left, I think the first week of July, so the chick was about two weeks old. We dont know what happened, probably a natural predator like an owl or possibly a fox or a raccoon got it. It couldnt fly, so we know something happened to it on the beach. Mostly its predation that gets them. Predation is a pretty heavy threat for them, and also, loss of habitat and the pressure of habitat use. In the 1930s, when their populations started to decline, it was from beachfront home construction and beach use. So, especially, off-road vehicles later becoming popular would just go right over them or their nests. And as that was mitigated in the 1980s, as they were listed as a federally endangered bird under the Endangered Species Act, theyve gotten more protections for their habitat, and so, theres no longer off-road vehicles allowed, beachfront construction has slowed down. But just the presence of people and dogs on the beach has increased significantly, and so, having less area available to them to be able to forage, because they eat most of the day, theyre really small birds, and theyre just eating invertebrates, so getting to their food source is really important, and the stress of feeling like theyre constantly being chased by people or dogs around can decrease their survivorship. And so, at Sandy Island Beach, we have part of their habitat, its about 100 meters of shoreline thats roped off for them. So, people can still walk by, but they cant set up and hang out there. And so, that keeps some area available to them.

In the 1930s, Nellis went on, at our beach there were 14 nesting pairs. In all of the Great Lakes, I think there were right around 1,000. So, having only 17 pairs in 1984, they declined pretty quickly. But theyre slowly making a comeback. The goal for de-listing them, or getting them off the endangered species list, is to have 150 breeding pairs, and 100 of them need to be in Michigan and then 50 more spread throughout the Great Lakes. Were still about 90 pairs away from that. I would be thrilled to be unemployed from this position in two or three years, if we could get that many pairs, but its likely that theyll still be endangered.

They need that open beach, she said, so that their little legs can navigate through it. A lot of dune stabilization efforts are important to hold the dunes in place. Without some vegetation there, they just blow away and erode. But over-vegetation can be hard for the plovers to navigate. Storms at certain times of the year are good, because it washes out some of that vegetation and makes more habitat available, but if theres a storm when the chicks are very young, they cant stay dry and warm, and they can die from that. If their nest on the ground gets washed out and flooded, thats problematic as well.

Once they settle, they typically stay on that beach, and they can travel up to a mile. But when they are trying to find good habitat for the first time, many times, theyll go back to their original birth place where they were hatched, but obviously, thats not what ours did, so a certain percentage of them fly around and try to find other suitable habitat. Theres a 17-mile stretch of the dune wetland ecosystem along eastern Lake Ontario. It starts with Deer Creek Wildlife Management Area, which is just south of Sandy Island, and goes north up to Eldorado and Black Pond Wildlife Management Area. So, they would prospect along that. But they also could fly all the way across Lake Ontario and check out beaches in Canada. The main population of Great Lakes piping plovers are in Michigan. 2018 was the first year that there were piping plovers on all the Great Lakes again.

If I got to pick and control things, Nellis said, which I dont, I would love for one of our chicks to come back and find a mate from an area such as Michigan or Canada to increase the genetics a little bit. So, its possible that two chicks from a different year or Aragorns brother, who we dont have a name for, he has visited the beach as well, and not stayed around, but he attempted to nest with one of our chicks in Canada. So, kind of funny in human terms that our chick tried to nest with her uncle. I know genetically theres a possibility that it could be detrimental, but at this point, with such a small population, it would overall still be a good thing if they were able to nest together.

They nest on areas that people frequent, and often large volumes of people, and they can still successfully nest, which is pretty impressive. And sometimes, well see people walking by them, and the person doesnt notice the bird, and the bird just continues foraging. But more often than not, the person doesnt notice the bird because theyre just enjoying the beach day, and the bird is running away from them as a perceived threat, or if the chicks are there, theyll do that broken wing act, where they kind of put their belly on the ground and flop their wings around, making it look like they cant fly away, but theyre trying to. And so, that would attract the predators attention, and it would go towards them rather than the chicks, and then it would make a short flight and do it again that would keep leading the predator away, and then fly back once the predators far enough away.

Both the male and female do that behavior.

We observe it more often in the males than the female, Nellis said. The female tends to not be quite as good of a parent as the male. But the male is really protective, and he will do the broken wing act, he will brood the chicks in his feathers to keep them warm, and hell also mob gulls. If a gull is getting too close to one of the chicks, hell fly over it and kind of peck at it. Gulls dont actively seek the chicks out, but gulls are such generalists and opportunists that if one is nearby and they could pick it up and eat it, they definitely would. Weve been fortunate that that hasnt happened with our pair in New York, but in other populations, its been demonstrated.

Plovers are primarily ground-dwelling shore birds. Thats one of the main distinctions between shore birds and sea birds. Sea birds, like terns and seagulls, will fly out and get fish, and then kind of land on the beach to rest or to eat. But shore birds, like plovers or sandpipers, will have that behavior where they run down the beach and eat at the shoreline, and then they run back up the beach to rest.

That running style is one of their distinctive traits.

Once you know what youre looking for, you can pick them out on the landscape, Nellis said, but oftentimes when Im talking to the public, if they havent seen them before, we have to get a spotting scope out to really zoom in on them. They have the same color feathers as the sand, so they blend in real well, and theyre also very small, and I think people are so used to looking at seagulls or the larger terns that fly around out there, a small bird just running along the shore is hard to pick out. Especially, they have a run, stop, movement where theyll run a short way and then kind of stop and look around or squat down in the sand even and then run again. So, they can be real hard to pick out. Even when I first started out working with them this spring, I had a horrible time. I was like, I cant believe this is my job and I cant even find the bird. But once you know what youre looking for, you kind of have that search image. And the chicks, especially, are even more difficult to find. When they first hatch, they are about the size of a cotton ball, and they weigh the same as two pennies. Theyre just so tiny, and incredibly well camouflaged. Their behavior also, when they get scared, is to flatten against the sand. They just really disappear right into it, which works great for aerial predators, like merlin or other hawks, but for ground predators, or even ground-going mammals like ourselves and dogs, even if theyre not maliciously seeking out the bird, it perceives us as a threat, it squats down, we dont see it, and they can easily be stepped on.

And the adults arent too big either.

Theyre very small, Nellis said. What we tell people on the beach, to give them an idea, is an adult weighs the same as a stick of butter.

But at least an adult plover has a chance of getting out of your way.

The adults will fly away once you get close, Nellis added. But the chicks cant fly. They can walk around within the first few hours of birth, so, theyre mobile but also vulnerable since theyre not in that nest. But they cant fly until about 20 to 25 days after they hatch.

All the plovers are uniquely banded with different-colored bands and a metal band on the other leg with a longer individual identification number on it.

They dont have a radio tracker on them, Nellis said. They just have the individual bands. So, if theyre traveling around to other beaches and not staying long, and they dont get sighted by a birder or a researcher thats up there, we dont really know where they go.

But in one way somewhat similar to salmon, plovers tend to return to where they were born. They have pretty high site fidelity, as its referred to, Nellis said.

That also means, she said, returning to where theyve successfully nested year after year, as well. Where youve been successful, you tend to head back. And maybe thats true for Claire Nellis too. All she knows for sure is, shes proud of her community.

Because this land was originally private, and so many of those families still live on the pond and enjoy that area, they all have a sense of ownership and pride in taking care of it, and thats something that I am proud of Pulaski and my community recognizing, she said. And having the piping plovers return to this area, theyre the only nesting pair in New York state, I think is really special and really a marker of how hard the community has worked to improve the ecosystem.

Nellis credits many others with helping her in this project.

We work with SUNY ESF and Jonathan Cohens lab, Nellis said. He has a permit that allows us to capture them and band them. Were only allowed to handle them for half-an-hour before they have to be released back to the parents. Theyre a well-oiled machine. We were fortunate enough to observe and help out a little bit, but he had graduate students come out whove worked with them before, capture them and place bands and then release them again.

Nellis also credited the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; the Onondaga Audobon Society; New York State Department of Environmental Conservation; Jonathan Cohens graduate Ph.D. student, Allison Kocek; Robyn Niver and Tim Sullivan, both at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Irene Mazzocchi at the Department of Environmental Conservation; my supervisor, Tom Hughes, the regional biologist; Kelly Morrissette, the manager of the state park; and all the members at the Eastern Lake Ontario Dune Coalition have been really helpful, she said, especially noting Tom Hart, Sandy Bononno, and Patricia Schulenberg. Were lucky to have an organization like that that cares so much and helps with getting everybody on the same page.

Right now, its very likely there are more people trying to save the piping plover than there are piping plovers. But in the face of what oftentimes seem like overwhelming odds, the persistence of dedicated people and the resiliency of nature combine to perform what almost seems a miracle. That miracle may very well be in the making right now at Sandy Island Beach.

More:
The piping plover making a comeback at Sandy Island Beach, Pulaski native who's come home to help - NNY360

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