Rhoda found a pair of Piping Plovers at Tiscornia yesterday. They were still there in the afternoon when I went by. In the 8 years I've lived here I've seen them exactly every other year.
I was expecting them to be half or 3/4 of a mile north of Tiscornia since that's the area most free of people when the beach is busy. Instead they were a hundred yards north of the Tiscornia just standing there resting. I took a couple pics with the SLR but kicked myself for not lugging the scope out to be able to read the bands. This one has some blue on both legs.
The other one had no blue.
If they were any other species I'd have crawled up to them on my belly, instead I returned to the car to get the scope. Beachwalkers got them up and moving about though and only the second one stuck around for me to try to phone-scope it
The left leg has an orange band with a green circle above the knee with a yellow over orange band on bottom.
I'll do some investigating online and see if their origin is deducible.
3 comments:
Great photos of a great bird! Thanks Matt.
Cathy
Matt - report these birds and their band details to:
plover@umn.edu
They'll get back with you on the origins, age, etc. if you request info.
From one the researcher at the above email address:
Matt,
Good to hear from you again. Thanks for continuing to send in reports of
Piping Plovers that you see.
The plover with the blue bands hatched this summer at Ludington State Park.
It was the only one from its brood that survived to fledge.
The plover with yellow bands hatched this summer at Sleeping Bear Point in
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Nice photo!
Thanks again,
Alice
Post a Comment