A Bluenoser at Good Harbor Beach – the fascinating world of shorebirds!
At this time of year, we Gloucester Plover Ambassadors are at Good Harbor Beach (trying) to keep track of the comings and goings of the Plovers. Some birds are arriving to set up house while others are passing through on their way to their summer nesting homes. Last week while out on Plover patrol, Super Dad was spotted, along with a sweet pair that we’re fairly certain is a mated pair from last summer, and a new little friend. It wasn’t until I returned home and began looking at the footage that I noticed that this unfamiliar one was banded!
Finding a banded bird at Good Harbor Beach is pretty exciting because instead of wondering where the bird came from, you can learn from just looking at the tag . Several years ago Good Harbor Beach was a stopover for a Plover with a green tag and white letters, which indicated that it was banded by Virginia Tech. He had flown from the southern coast of Georgia to Gloucester in just under five days!
As you can see in the photo, N5’s band is white with a black alphanumeric code, which indicates he was banded in Canada. A quick Google search led to several contacts where to report Canadian banded birds and we sure hit the jackpot of information from these kind wildlife biologists, Dr. Cheri Gratto-Trevor and Hilary Mann.
People are always asking us Ambassadors, where do the birds go after departing GHB in August? The following is not a complete picture, but does provide a tiny widow into the flight pattern of one of these remarkable little travelers.
Cheri writes, “White flag N5 was banded as an adult in June 2024 at Sandy Bay, in southern Nova Scotia. The bird was seen in Fall (Aug) 2024 at Sunset Beach, Tubbs Inlet, NC.”
Hilary writes the following, ” In 2024, we put a nanotag on N5. This is a small radio transmitter that helps us track birds, when they fly close to a station that is part of the motus wildlife tracking network. We got a track of N5, which you can see below. The dashed lines show the ‘direct flight’, and if this is no line connecting dots as the plover moved south, it just shows that they may have stopped somewhere along the way. N5 crossed from southern Nova Scotia to Cape Cod in about 10 hours, on the night of August 6, 2024. By August 10, it was down in North Carolina. We do not have any detections past August 10, but there are fewer stations to detect the tags south of North Carolina. The tag is glued on, so it falls off in the winter when the battery dies, and we do not have tracks of its Northbound movements.”
Think about that – In 2024, N5 flew from Nova Scotia to North Carolina in four and half days! After first departing Sandy Bay, N5 flew nonstop to Cape Cod, when it appears he was next tracked at either a Rhode Island or Connecticut beach, across the sound on to Montauk, at the eastern end of Long Island, then a non-stop flight to Cape May, which is also an important holdover location for Monarchs waiting for the ideal wind to carry them over the mouth of the Delaware Bay. He is next hitting locations at Virginia beaches and North Carolina’s Outer Banks before arriving at Sunset Beach, which is just south of Ocean Isle at the southern point of North Carolina.
And in 2025, N5 returned to Sandy Bay, Nova Scotia and successfully fledged two chicks!
Our deepest thanks and appreciation to Dr. Cheri Gratto-Trevor, research scientist emeritus with Environment and Climate Change Canada and to Hilary Mann, wildlife biologist with Canadian Wildlife Service.
I pulled this map off Google to show what a direct flight it is for Plovers flying from Cape Ann to southern Nova Scotia.
Nova Scotia Piping Plover N5 in the foreground. The film clip is in 10 times slow motion so you can see the band placed on the upper right tibia.
Read more about banded Piping Plovers seen at Cape Ann beaches here –
FUN 411 UPDATE ON ETM, THE CUMBERLAND ISLAND BANDED PLOVER
Many, many thanks to Gloucester Daily Times reporter Bobby Grady and editor-in-chief Andrea Holbrook for the Times‘s continued coverage of our Gloucester Plovers. The story appeared in Thursday’s Times with a gentle reminder to give the Plovers lots of space as they are establishing their nesting territories.
The coverage the Times has provided since the Plovers first arrived back in 2016 has been invaluable in helping to create an awareness about these very vulnerable, yet valiant, threatened shorebirds. Thank you again Andrea, Bobby, and the GDTimes!
Happy Spring,
xxKim
PiPl N5 at time of banding provided by Hilary Mann