Quick Field Outing

Caitlin gently lifts the new-born from the nest

Caitlin shows off the newly-born plover chick

I'll get back to Svalbard next week but wanted to share a couple of shots from a quick field outing with biologist, Caitlin Nilsen of the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory.  Caitlin is the Waterbird Director with the SFBBO and monitors the bay area population of snowy plovers.  

The second sibling emerges

This morning I dragged Jaymi Heimbuch, a talented writer for TreeHugger (Twitter: @JaymiHeimbuch), away from her warm bed at an ungodly hour to accompany me to the plover breeding grounds near Hayward, California.  We caught up with Caitlin and headed into the restricted reserve in search of a nesting site she suspected might be ready to hatch.  When we arrived the first of three speckled eggs had already been breached.  The resulting chick was snuggling the remaining two eggs.  Plover chicks are mobile and able to feed themselves very shortly after hatching.  Once they are on their feet they are nearly impossible to catch.  However, this one needed a little more time to dry off, warm up with mom and gain a bit more strength before we could safely give it some "birdie bling" and so we backed away and Caitlin treated us to a tour of the reserve while we waited, complete with an overview of the restoration project.  

After two hours we returned to the nest and found the chick looking fully twice it's hatching size.  He now resembled a cute little cotton-ball.  While Caitlin carefully placed the color-coded bands on the chick, Jaymi and I were delighted to witness the second sibling break from of it's egg.  Caitlin and her team receive a limited number of unique band sequences per season so only one chick from this nest will receive the bands.


To learn more about the Snowy Plover Recovery Project, including ways you can help and where to report sightings of banded plovers, please visit http://www.SFBBO.org.

A quick check to make certain mom is watching before putting the newly banded chick back with it's sibling. Snowy Plovers are perfectly camouflaged on the salt ponds.  Do you see the nest with the second chick beginning to hatch?