The day after Stevie Nicks & Lindsey Buckingham hatched their four chicks, they marched them straight over to Plover Park’s most magnificent feature: The Finger.The Finger is a small area at the tip of the Great Lake Octavious Rex which floods slowly and occasionally, keep it a rich, muddy, source of bugs, worms, and all of the other nasty things Piping Plovers love to eat.It’s my favorite area and I think Todd Pover himself would agree. It is the most perfectly simulated habitat and is exactly the kind of place Piping Plovers need.Its rich mud is a disgusting place to sit and count the chicks, but the sight of these tiny babies, no taller than the small blades of grass sprouting there, foraging non-stop and undisturbed is probably the most beautiful thing you can see on Long Beach Island; and that’s saying a lot.These little things have about 40 days to gain enough weight to migrate all the way to the Bahamas later this summer. They need to eat non-stop the entire time, and what they eat needs to be rich in calories.Bugs abound.The wide, flat mud with sparse vegetation is a perfect place for them to find nasty treats and blend in to the surroundings for protection.They sure are cute when they run, but once you understand what it takes them to survive migration, you want to see them gaining calories, not burning them.Many of Plover Park’s superstar celebrity alumni grew up strong and healthy at The Finger, including Jimin, Kookie, Windom Earle, and Ruth Langmore. Plover Park breeds winners, and The Finger feeds them.Creeping around, being nasty, and adorable. The true life of a Piping Plover chick. I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into life at this amazing spot. Plover Park is an absolute miracle. Even though it was we who destroyed the natural splendor of the shore (which is flooded, unstable, muddy, bug and worm infested nastiness) it was also people who put a little bit of it back at Barnegat Light! If you are near LBI this week, Todd Pover is giving a talk about Plover Park at the LBIF on the 13th, and a walking tour on the 15th. If there is a Q&A, you can sound really smart by asking “Can you tell us about The Finger? I hear it is both the most disgusting and the most beautiful place on Long Beach Island.” (Just be prepared to say “Holgate doesn’t count” when Todd attempts to qualify your statement)
And just for perspective, here is a current view from The Little Egg Foundation’s FingerCam showing the area seen on a microscopic level in the photos above from a human perspective. You really have to pinch and zoom to see the chicks when they are there! This camera sends me a short video every hour. I’m using it to better understand how the presence of predators (in this case, gulls), effects the chicks’ use of The Finger.
Love it (Plover Park) and learning about this mini ecosystem within it – the nasty/needed finger. Go baby plovers – keep on growing and getting stronger each day!
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