Point Reyes snowy plovers: a strong 2023 and a record return

Snowy plover hatchlings on Limantour Beach. NPS / Matt Lau.

Among western snowy plovers, it is the fathers who raise the young. At Point Reyes National Seashore in California, biologists spend each spring and summer trying to keep track of skittish plover dads and their chicks in the dunes — and in 2023 the count told a story of habitat restoration paying off.

A fast start to 2023

National Park Service and Point Blue Conservation Science biologists began surveying the beaches and dunes for nests in March.

One of the hatched nests belonged to the long-reigning pair nicknamed the "king and queen of Limantour", nesting there since 2018; by May 21 they had two new chicks.

Why Abbotts Lagoon matters

Many of the year's active nests were in the Abbotts Lagoon restoration area, informally called "Abbotts Triangle". The Seashore has been restoring coastal dunes since 2001 to give plovers and other native species — Tidestrom's lupine among them — better habitat. The restored dunes and low native plants are ideal cover for a small bird hiding from predators, which is exactly why they make the monitoring so hard.

Plover eggs in the Abbotts Lagoon restoration area. NPS / Matt Lau.

Coming back

Every chick gets a unique combination of coloured leg bands, so individuals can be followed from year to year. Of the 29 chicks that fledged in 2022, 18 were confirmed breeding in 2023, at Point Reyes or elsewhere along the coast — the highest juvenile return rate since banding began at the Seashore. The team keeps watching each nest through the season to measure hatching success and chick survival.

Plovers and their beaches depend on each other, so a good plover year is also a sign that the dune ecosystem is getting healthier.

Sources

Written from "Western Snowy Plover Monitoring: A Strong Start to the 2023 Breeding Season" by Avani Fachon, San Francisco Bay Area Inventory & Monitoring Network (National Park Service, June 2023), a work of the United States government in the public domain.