Category Archives: Cape Hedge Beach

Beaches Ravaged by Late May Nor’easter

Leave a reply

Dear PiPl Friends,

First the bad news – our Super Mom and Dad’s nest was washed away during Thursday’s nor’easter. We are very sad about this especially as chick hatching was imminent.

Our Original Pair have never before lost a nest because of a storm however, several years ago, a pair at GHB did lose their nest due to wash out as it was in a very unsafe place, smack dab in the middle of the beach. That pair successfully renested.

We are much more fortunate than some beaches. Our Plover ambassador friends at Hull lost a total of 25 nests and the high tides have destroyed miles of their symbolic shorebird protections.

Super Mom and Dad after the nor’easter

Fierce Dad catching breakfast after the storm

Now for the good news – Piping Plovers often renest, especially when this early in the season. One pair was documented renesting a total of seven times in one season.   And it appears as though Super Mom and Dad are preparing to do just that. After a day of looking lost and forlorn, Dad is making scrapes in the sand and calling to Mom. Producing a new batch of eggs is very taxing for the female and our Super Mom is already very vulnerable due to her loss of one foot. A gentle reminder that when you see Plovers on the beach, please give them lots of space to forage, and hopefully, make new eggs.

Despite the extremely high storm tide going all the way to the base of the dunes, Good Harbor Beach survived the storm fairly well and looks better after this nor’easter than any nor’easter that I can recall. Why you may wonder? As a direct result of the symbolically roped off areas in place for the Plovers, beachgoers and pets are restricted from recreating  right up to the base of the dunes. This has allowed native vegetation to take hold, and in some areas, to thrive. This vegetation, such as beach grass and Sea Rocket, holds the sand in place and is our very best defense against rising sea level and the ravaging effects of the highest of tides and gale force winds.

The photos tell the story best

Compare the photos from storm damage in 2018 and how the dunes looks in 2024. Note how far back is the dune, the sheer drop off, and complete lack of vegetation. I recall a time when people were so very worried about how much beach we were losing each year to severe storm damage. That is no longer the case!

Click on the above photos from 2018 to enlarge and get a sense of how much the beach has filled in and how much healthier are the dunes.

Good Harbor Beach 2021, 2024, and 2025 – vegetation gradually taking hold and the sand is filling in.

A plethora of Atlantic Surf Clams tossed ashore by the sea

What are these peculiar mounds dotting the beach after the nor’easter? The photos are included to show how much the sand shifted during the storm and how vegetation helps keep sand in place

Soooo much seaweed at Brace Cove! The insects attracted to the drying seaweed is fantastic for wildlife, but get ready for super smelliness!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend,

xxKim

Our Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay Boston Film Festival Premiere is Sold Out!

Leave a reply

My sincerest thanks to all who are planning to attend the premiere tonight. It’s my greatest hope that you enjoy and are inspired by our documentary. Thank you to Robin Dawson and the outstanding Boston Film Festival team and to Michelle Alekson and the equally outstanding Rockport Music crew. Thank you also to Gail McCarthy and Andrea Holbrook for the awesome press and to Dan Driscoll from CapeAnn MA and Rockport Stuff Facebook pages for helping to get the word out.

With love, gratitude, and the deepest appreciation for your support.

Thank you,
xoKim

The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay Easter Eggs

Leave a reply

There are a bunch of eggs in our Plover film. Not only Plover eggs, but Easter eggs. Some are more obvious than others. I hope you have fun finding them!

A characteristic behavior of many male Plovers when they first arrive to a potential breeding site is called “flight display.” The birds circle around and around a location, piping loudly. A male showing flight display behavior will do this for several days, and even longer. Hopefully, he will eventually attract the attention of a female. The above clip is an obvious Easter egg 🙂

Thank you to everyone who is planning to attend.  We are so very much looking forward to seeing you!

Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay in Google Alerts!

Leave a reply

Many thanks to Gail McCarthy and the Gloucester Daily Times for again featuring the Boston Film Festival and our Piping Plover premiere in Gail’s T.G.I.F. column. Second time we’ve been listed in Google Alerts for the BFF!

Thank you to everyone who is planning to attend. We are so very much looking forward to seeing you!

To reserve your tickets, please go here: https://rockportmusic.org/boston-film-festival/. 

Shout Out to the Boston Film Festival Team!

Leave a reply

Thank you so much to the Boston Film Festival for this beautiful poster for our film premiere! With gratitude to Robin Dawson, the Boston Film Festival and Rockport Music.

Reserve your seats today! https://tickets.rockportmusic.org/9769/9770

Thank You Gail McCarthy and the Gloucester Daily Times!

Leave a reply

Many, many, thanks to Gail McCarthy and  Editor Andrea Holbrook for the very much appreciated write-up about the Boston Film Festival in today’s Gloucester Daily Times. Extra special shout out and thanks for featuring The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay!

See full article HERE: https://www.gloucestertimes.com/news/40th-boston-film-festival-closes-with-premiere-in-rockport/article_9a789c52-6edf-11ef-abc0-47c012851a0d.html

To reserve your tickets for The Piping Plovers of moonlight Bay, please go here.

The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay – the sweetest story around!

1 Reply

Good Morning PiPl Friends!

We have wonderfully joyful news to share about our forthcoming film, The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay. I have started submitting to film festivals and we have already been accepted to three, notably for our community, the local upcoming Newburyport Film Festival!

Equally as exciting is that our film is in consideration for public television. Bringing the documentary to public television requires round two of fundraising. We are looking for Piping Plover Angel Sponsors and this is where your help is needed. We are hoping to connect with environmentally and wildlife conscious individuals, organizations, and corporations to sponsor our film. If you have any suggestions of an organization or individual that may be interested in underwriting The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay, please contact me at kimsmithdesigns@hotmail.com. Our non-profit fiscal partner is Filmmakers Collaborative, which is a 501(c)(3). An individual’s or organization’s gift is tax deductible.

Underwriting a program on PBS provides an incredibly unique and trusted opportunity for promoting your organization. We have up to 60 seconds of promotional spots, which means over the three year period that the film airs on PBS, each and every time the film is played, at both the beginning and end of the film, your promotion will air. Based on the national success of Beauty on the Wing, we are confident The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay will also play to millions of households across the country. The carriage results for Beauty on the Wing are well-documented.  I am happy to provide all the information needed, including donor levels, budget, and more details about promoting your organization.

We are also planning a fundraising screening event! More about that in an upcoming post. And, if so inclined, here is a link to our on-line fundraiser. All fundraising from this point forward goes towards bringing the life story of the Piping Plover to the wide world of public television.

I would like to give a huge thank you to the Cape Ann Garden Club and to Suki Augusti for the recent very generous contributions to our film. Their contributions are going straight away toward our public television fundraiser. We are so appreciative for all the kind contributions from our community.

With gratitude to the following PiPl friends for their kind contributions – Lauren Mercadante (New Hampshire), Sally Jackson (Gloucester), Cape Ann Garden Club, Brace Cove Foundation (Gloucester), JH Foundation/Fifth Third Bank (Ohio), Jane Alexander (New York), Janis and John Bell (Gloucester), Jennie Meyer (Gloucester), Alice and David Gardner (Beverly), JoeAnn Hart (Gloucester), Kim Tieger (Manchester), Joanne Hurd (Gloucester), Holly Niperus (Phoenix), Bill Girolamo (Melrose), Claudia Bermudez (Gloucester), Paula and Alexa Niziak (Rockport), Todd Pover (Springfield), Cynthia Dunn (Gloucester), Nancy Mattern (Albuquerque), Marion Frost (Ipswich), Cecile Christianson (Peabody), Sally Jackson (Gloucester), Donna Poirier Connerty (Gloucester), Mary Rhinelander (Gloucester), Jane Hazzard (Georgetown), Duncan Holloman (Gloucester), Karen Blandino (Rockport), Duncan Todd (Lexington), Sue Winslow (Gloucester), Amy Hauck-Kalti (Ohio), JoAnn Souza (Newburyport), Karen Thompson (San Francisco), Carolyn Mostello (Rhode Island), Susan Pollack (Gloucester), Peggy O’Malley (Gloucester), Hilda Santos (Gloucester), Maggie Debbie (Gloucester), Sandy Barry (Gloucester), The Massachusetts Daughters of the American Revolution, Mary Keys (Madeira, Ohio), Barbara Boudreau (Gloucester), Suki Augusti, Jonathan and Sally Golding (Gloucester), and my sweet husband Tom 🙂

Although our film has been “locked” for a number of weeks, and will soon be playing at festivals, I have spent the past several months continuing to document Plovers nesting in our region. This summer was exceptionally magnificent at one very special location. Three pairs nested, with the nests situated in a row, across a very short expanse. The dynamics between the three pairs was fascinating and at times I held my breath hoping no one would be severely injured in the Plover rumbles that took place on an almost daily basis. The truly exceptional news is that Pair One laid three eggs and three chicks fledged, Pair Two laid four eggs and four chicks fledged, and Pair Three laid three eggs and three chicks are well on their way to full fledgedom. It has been a remarkable experience documenting these three families.

The pair whose chicks are nearly fully fledged astounded me the most. In nine years of filming and documenting Plovers, I have never seen a nest so completely and utterly exposed, smack dab in the middle of a busy urban beach. Oftentimes, a nest will be tucked behind a clump of beach grass or Sea Rocket, a piece of driftwood, or a seashell; I have even filmed garbage used as camouflage. While incubating the eggs, the parents often toss in dried beach grass, tiny stones, and bits of broken seashells, but this nest contained none of that. Just three little eggs in the bare sand.

Every time I checked on Pair Three’s nest, there was either Mom or Dad flattened in the sand and hardly noticeable. Incredibly, this is a location that has been severely plagued with predation by Crows. Thankfully, the Crows were not onto this little nest, nor the other two nests.

Hours old hatchlings from the most vulnerable of locations-

Sprouts!

Leave a reply

I hope you can get a sense of scale and vulnerability of these tiniest of beach babies. They are navigating the beach within hours after hatching and even the most aware may inadvertently collide. Please give them lots of space ❤

The chicks in the first batch of photos are all less than a week old. The above chick is about three weeks old. My how they grow so quickly (the Sea Rocket, too)!

The Good Harbor Beach Piping Plovers July Update

Leave a reply

Dear Piping Plover Friends,

I hope you had an enjoyable extended Fourth of July weekend! Like many of us, I feel we who live on Cape Ann are so very blessed, not only for our fantastic community sharing in celebrations like St. Peter’s Fiesta and Independence Day, but also for the natural beauty that surrounds us, which in turn attracts a bevy of beautiful wild creatures to our shores and wild spaces.

Super Mom and Dad arrived from their wintering grounds in early spring

Nine years ago a pair of Piping Plovers began calling Good Harbor Beach home. There is so much good that this intrepid little duo has brought to our community. People have come together to help protect the birds and the community has become more educated about nesting shorebirds. Equally as exciting is the growing awareness of the connection between conserving habitats and wildlife. For decades our dunes have been ravished by storms and a lack of basic protections. Because a narrow corridor that runs the length of the beach was roped off for Plovers, it has largely kept people from recreating close to the dune’s edge. Creating this corridor has allowed beach vegetation to take hold. The areas of the beach that have been consistently roped off for the past eight years are clearly the healthiest.

A vital new habitat has developed in the area of the dunes that has been roped off consistently for eight years.

The above area has only this year begun to be roped off. Notice how ravaged is the edge of the dune. That is what the edge of the dunes looked like along the length of the entire beach prior to creating protective corridors. You can see that one of the first plants to begin to take hold is Sea Rocket. The same exact sequence of revegetation happened in the area depicted in the first photo – Sea Rocket, followed by beach grass.

It is one of our greatest hopes that the City will continue to leave the roping in place year round. There is a tiny, and fortunately, diminishing, minority of sour anti-Plover/anti-conservation types however, no matter how one feels about making space for Plovers, it is undeniable that by creating protective corridors, the dunes have never looked as lush and as healthy as they do today. I urge you to go and see for yourself!

Additionally, roping off the areas for the Plovers has had zero economic impact on beach attendance. As a matter of fact, since the Blinkay system was implemented, beach revenue has gone up in the past few years.

We have a wonderfully dedicated crew of Ambassadors hourly monitoring the Plovers and educating beachgoers about the presence of Plovers. I’d like to give a heartfelt thanks to Deborah Brown, Jennie Meyer, Jill Ortiz, Paula and Alexa Niziak, Barbara Boudreau, and our newest Ambassadors, Kim Bouris and Sandy Barry. If you see them around town, please thank them for their hours and hours of dedication to our teeniest neighbors.

Last year, the City hired Mass Audubon to oversee Plover monitoring. The Audubon team is phenomenal -so well-educated, enthusiastic, conscientious, and kind. I can’t say enough good things about Lyra Brennan, Malarie Markowitz, and the entire Audubon crew! The Gloucester DPW has been a tremendous partner as well. The DPW did an outstanding job installing the roped off corridor last spring, not once, but twice, as the first installation was destroyed by a late season storm. We are so fortunate to all be working together for Plover protections, from sunup to sunrise!

Gloucester’s DW Crew Mike Tarantino and Tyler Curtis

Not all monitoring of Plovers is successful (I’ll write more about that in a future post); we did want to share though the joyful news that our Super Mom and Super Dad have fledged two healthy chubby little chicks. We are so proud of Mom and Dad. No matter what curveballs life throws their way, the pair continue to be phenomenal parents!

From a nest of four eggs, one chick did not survive the very first night. A second chick was lost about a week later. The two remaining chicks thrived and grew to fly. We have lots of wonderful stories to share about their adventures 🙂

The maiden voyage of the Plovers is the most dangerous. We wish our tiny tender fledglings safe travels.

I’ll be posting more about Plovers in the coming weeks. Our Plover documentary is progressing beautifully (updates about that soon,) and I am dropping off new Plover tees and stickers this week at Alexandra’s Bread. 

Warmest wishes,

Kim

ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT AT 50 YEARS OLD!

Leave a reply

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act. In its first 50 years, the ESA has been credited with saving fully 99% of listed species from extinction, thanks to the collaborative actions of federal, state, and local agencies, Tribal governments, conservation organizations, and private citizens. Read here for some very notable successes. 

Bald Eagle Soars Over Gloucester

From the US Department of Interior, “The Act has saved hundreds of species from extinction and continues to protect and preserve some of our most beloved animals and plants. It has also helped to create a better understanding of how human activities can impact the environment and how we can work together to protect it. Perhaps most importantly, this anniversary is a reminder that conservation efforts are essential for stemming the worsening impacts of climate change, protecting biodiversity and preserving our planet for ourselves and future generations.”

Did you know that when the ESA first listed the Piping Plover, in 1985, there were fewer than 4,000 breeding pairs nationwide? Today, in Massachusetts alone, we are currently hosting over 1100 nesting pairs. Our PiPl Friends at the New York City Plover Project were recently featured in “Ten Stories of Hope: The Endangered Species Act at 50” a new report by the Endangered Species Coalition. To read more about Plovers and all of the stories of hope,  you can download a pdf of the article here.

Building on the success of Piping Plovers in recovery, please consider making an end of the year tax deductible donation to our ongoing documentary funding efforts for The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay. Your contribution goes directly to the cost of finishing the film and is absolutely invaluable!

Donate here to our Network for Good online fundraiser .

We are deeply appreciative of every gift given, small and large. For large contributions, your name and organization’s logo is prominently displayed at the beginning and end of the film, with opportunities for up to 30 second promotional spots.  Please feel free to call or write with any questions regarding sponsorship. 

With gratitude to the following PiPl friends for their kind contributions – Lauren Mercadante (New Hampshire), Jennie Meyer (Gloucester), Alice and David Gardner (Beverly), JoeAnn Hart (Gloucester), Kim Tieger (Manchester), Joanne Hurd (Gloucester), Holly Niperus (Phoenix), Bill Girolamo (Melrose), Claudia Bermudez (Gloucester), Paula and Alexa Niziak (Rockport), Todd Pover (Springfield), Cynthia Dunn (Gloucester), Nancy Mattern (Albuquerque), Marion Frost (Ipswich), Cecile Christianson (Peabody), Sally Jackson (Gloucester), Donna Poirier Connerty (Gloucester), Mary Rhinelander (Gloucester), Jane Hazzard (Georgetown), Duncan Holloman (Gloucester), Karen Blandino (Rockport), Duncan Todd (Lexington), Sue Winslow (Gloucester), Amy Hauck-Kalti (Ohio), JoAnn Souza (Newburyport), Karen Thompson (San Francisco), Carolyn Mostello (Rhode Island), and my sweet husband Tom 🙂

The art of camouflage – one-day-old chicks