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
Dear Friends,
I hope you are enjoying these wonderfully warm last days of summer. I can see the critters sure are! Herons, butterflies, frogs, dragonflies, beavers, bees, hawks, Kingfishers, (even a Merlin!); our ponds, meadows, and shores are teeming with wildlife preparing for winter.
I have been super busy fundraising and organizing deliverables for festivals and apologize for not sharing some of the incredible stories taking place right here in our own backyards. As soon as I get further along in all, I’ll share the images and footage. Some of the most fascinating moments have been watching a beaver. I think I posted on my website a video of a beaver rubbing his belly. A few days later, I observed him/her as he exfoliated (for lack of a better word) his face. First he dove down and retrieved a water lily tuber, which is an especially favorite beaver food at this time of year. After eating half, he then used the tuber to scrub the left side of his face. I thought perhaps this was an anomaly. Five minutes later he dove down, retrieved a second tuber, agan eating half. Then he scrubbed the right side of his face with the tuber. It was charming and funny and amazing to see and to film. Coming soon 🙂
Please be sure to reserve your seats at the Shalin Liu for the premiere of our documentary, The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay. Here is the link: https://rockportmusic.org/boston-film-festival/ It’s a truly heartwarming story and I think Massachusetts residents especially will be delighted with the film. Also, we are having a Q and A following the screening. Tickets are free but you do need to reserve in advance. That the tickets are free is a wonderfully generous gift to our community from the Boston Film Festival and Rockport Music. The 23rd is a Monday and 5:15pm is early enough in the evening for kids to see on a school night. Please bring your family and friends. We would love to see you there!
Warmest wishes,
xxKim
From teeny hatchlings to the miracle of fledging on crowded urban beaches, come celebrate the beautiful life story of the Piping Plover with us!
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)!
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
The best kind of Peeps – Plover Peeps. Happy Easter, Happy Spring friends!
Piping Plover chicks one-day-old
Just in for spring, we have a limited edition of Plover PEEP yellow unisex tees and onesies, perfect for your Chicks, big and small!
The T-shirts are a great length, longer than average, and both the tees and onesies are a beautiful super quality 100 percent cotton.
Question – do you think we should order kids sizes in the tees? I had one made for Charlotte in pink and i think it’s adorable. Let me know if you are interested in youth sizes.
And, Alexandra has a replenished batch of Cape Ann Piping Plover Project stickers!
All profits from the sale of the tees and stickers goes towards replenishing stock and toward our documentary, The Piping Plovers of Moonlight Bay, coming soon!
Alexandra’s Bread is located at 265 Main Street, Gloucester.
Open from 8:30 until 2:00 Wednesday through Saturday
Good morning PiPl Friends!
We are overjoyed to share that handicapped Mom and Super Dad have returned for their ninth year nesting at Good Harbor Beach!!! The pair were spotted by Tom on Sunday, the 24th. I raced over to meet him and we watched with delight as they foraged hungrily at the Creek shoreline. This is a record for Mom and Dad, by one day. We have been checking daily and know for certain that they flew in sometime the night before. At first I thought it was not handicapped Mom because the two were running so vigorously along the water’s edge but I was mistaken and it is our Mom! Plover pairs don’t always arrive on the exact same day, together. We know from banding programs that pairs don’t necessarily share the same wintering grounds; it’s wonderfully mystifying when they do share the same arrival date.
Second bit of good news is that the DPW crew is at the beach now as I write this, installing the roping. Unfortunately, we do not yet know if Audubon is going to be working at GHB this summer. Trying to obtain a clear answer has been challenging.
I apologize for the delay in letting you all know and thought it best to wait until the symbolic fencing went up and they had a safe zone.
If you would like to join us this summer volunteering as a Piping Plover Ambassador, please leave a comment in the comment section or email at kimsmithdesigns@hotmail.com.
I am working non stop on the PiPl documentary through Friday, when it goes back to the film finishing editors in Boston. I won’t be able to respond to emails until Saturday, unless it’s a PiPl emergency 🙂
Happiest of Springs ❤
xoKim
P.S. I just dropped off a batch of cheery Plover Peep yellow tees and onesies at Alexandra’s if you are in need of an Easter gift 🙂
HAPPY FATHER’S DAY TO ALL THE WONDERFUL SUPER DAD’S, both human and avian!
My husband Tom is the best Dad you could ever imagine. From Tom, I inherited the best father-in-law, his Dad. My heart is filled with much joy when I see my son Alex with his daughter and know he has inherited their same thoughtful and kind, gentle loving nature. I don’t want to go on about this because I realize not everyone is so blessed and that there are many absentee fathers out there, mine included. Enjoy all the Dads in your life and know you are so blessed if you are fortunate to know a good one.
The first photo is of a Piping Plover Dad thermosnuggling his three chicks and was taken recently at a beach on the south shore. I think the chicks are about three weeks old in the photo and it reminded me of our Good Harbor Super Dad. We call him Super Dad for a variety of reasons, but one of the most poignant is how he stayed with the handicapped chick for a month beyond the date when HipHop’s siblings had already learned to fly. It took Hip Hop twice as long to manage sustained flight but Super Dad was with him every step of the way. I think this is very unusual in the animal kingdom and is counter intuitive to the survival of the adult.
The second photo is of another species of shorebird that breeds along the New England coast, the Least Tern. Least Tern Dads share equally in brooding eggs.
Unlike Piping Plover chicks, which are precocial birds and can feed themselves within hours after hatching, Least Terns are semi-precocial and need to be fed by the adults. Least Tern Dads share equally in feeding the chicks.
Dear PiPl Friends,
As many of our PiPl followers are aware, this year the City of Gloucester hired Mass Audubon to help manage Cape Ann’s Plover population. We’ve had our first full week of collaborating with Mass Audubon and I have to say it just could not be better for all involved, but most importantly, for the Piping Plovers! The Mass Audubon staff is tremendously professional, kind, friendly, dedicated to wildlife conservation, and very personable. Lyra, who heads the coastal waterbird program for Mass Audubon, and Devon, Gloucester’s assistant conservation agent both have a great deal of experience managing Piping Plovers and are quick to respond to questions and challenges as they arise.
A few changes have been made to the beach. The roped off Plover areas to protect the Plovers has increased, however, there is still loads of space for beachgoers. An added bonus to creating safe spaces for Plovers is that over time, we have seen how the established protected areas for the Plovers has vastly improved the overall health of the beach. Why is that? Because when people and pets aren’t recreating up against the dunes, new vegetation is allowed to take hold including native American Beach Grass (Ammophila breviligulata), American Sea-rocket (Cakile edentula), Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), Beach Pea (Lathyrus japonicus) and Seaside Goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens). Protecting the dunes is one of the best coastal strategies for combating a warming climate. It’s truly a beautiful thing to see how much healthier are our dunes!
Another change that has taken place are the guidelines in how close we should stand when observing the Plovers. One of the most important ways to help the Plovers is to give them lots and lots of space. If we hover/stand/place camera gear for long periods of time pointing to the Plovers, wildlife biologists working with Mass Audubon have documented that this activity attracts Crows and Gulls! You may ask, “why is that a bad thing?” Crows voraciously eat Plover eggs and hungry seagulls eat Plovers at all stages of development, including eggs, hatchlings, and even 3 week old chicks.
The best way for we beachgoers to help the Plovers is to watch from a distance and not hover near the birds. With a half-way decent lens and a camera sensor with a good crop factor we can get beautiful shots from a safe distance. The City, Mass Audubon, and we Ambassadors are all asking this of the community and we are deeply appreciative of your help.
Piping Plover smackdown – The video is of our handicapped Super Mom. Her disability does not impede her determination nor ability in defending her territory. She is perhaps Good Harbor Beach’s most fierce Plover, despite her missing foot.
Piping Plovers ferociously defend their nesting territory from intruders of every shape and size; puffing up their feathers to appear larger, chasing, and even biting the offender. Here she is in early spring defending her little slice of Good Harbor Beach from Scruffy Boy’s shenanigans!
The Piping Plover Project 