It’s Piping Plover Pop Quiz time.
Who’s this?
And, who’s this?
If you answered “No clue,” “IDK,” “Lord knows,” or “How is anyone even supposed to know that?” then congratulations, you’ve passed today’s quiz. I’ve spent a month with these birds and taken these photos, and I’m still scratching my head. I have no idea which ones of our new birds these are.
That’s because they are all unbanded.
We have seven pairs of Piping Plovers at Barnegat Light this year—not too shabby. But out of those 14 birds, only five are banded. That means that 64% of the population is unbanded and unknowable, which is a big problem.
Of our five banded breeders, we know that Jimin, Marty Byrd, and Man were all hatched in Plover Park. That right there tells the whole story of how successful the Park has been. The other two, Myrtle and Lyndsey Buckingham, were both banded as adults and both at Barnegat Light. For all we know, they may have been born at Barnegat Light, too. Myrtle could even be one of Tufters & Taceys’ original chicks if you remember them!
Thankfully, there is a long tradition of banding at Barnegat Light State Park, and given the high stakes of the Great Plover Park Experiment, it is more important than ever that it continues. Banding is what exposed the problems at Barnegat Light, and banding is what presented the solution. And banding continues to allow the performance to be tracked, studied, understood, and improved upon. We need to know what happens to these birds. I won’t stop advocating for this until Barnegat Light is so full of PIPL you couldn’t band 35% of them even if you tried.
The numbers show a high turnover this year. We’re down from 100% banded adults to 35%. I hope Emily and Kashi are packing their banding kits as I write this.
Despite their lack of ID, this new unbanded crew is a good bunch. They are all sweet and, clearly, young. All of our banded birds have laid their eggs. All of our unbanded birds are still goofing around and driving us bananas.
Maybe they are just waiting to get their bands first.
