For better or worse, I spent a lot of my childhood at the track. What a fascinating world, especially when seen through a child’s eyes. The strange socioeconomics of the so-very rich and the so-very poor, all standing in one line, together, wild eyed with hope, greed, and the desire to win. The magnificence of the animals and the complexity of our relationship with them; do the horses like it, or are we being cruel? And if we are, are we within our right to do so? Are we celebrating their strength or abusing it?
Whatever the case, in what must be one of the most perfectly timed nests in history, our very own Secretariat produced his very first egg last night with a shy, sweet, unbanded little lady he has been courting all spring.
You can’t make this stuff up. They laid during the Kentucky Derby yesterday, and his name is actually Secretariat. He and his brother Seabiscuit were hatched in Plover Park in 2024. His parents were two of our local heavyweights, Lindsey Buckingham and Marty Bird, who, now divorced, are both nesting with new mates within view of Secretariat’s adorable new nest.
Most importantly, Secretariat’s real victory is that he produced the seventh piping plover nest of the season in Plover Park. That’s a new record for Barnegat Light State Park, and a fact I’m a little hesitant to share. Because I already can hear furious keyboard clacking of the nay-sayers, often well meaning but clearly lacking information, firing up the Facebook comments… “All this for just seven birds!!11? You’ve destroyed our beaches and taken all our freedoms for seven birds? Let nature take its course, they are doomed. Get a grip.“
First off, it’s not seven birds, it’s seven pairs, which means fourteen birds, now with the the possibility of producing four chicks each, which, if you’re doing the math correctly, means forty-two birds, or twenty-one pairs.
If you are enjoying the math of it, consider that there are only about 2000 breeding pairs of these birds left in the world. That means that our tiny, little Barnegat Light State Park is now responsible for greater than 1% of the total global population of piping plovers. One percent of the world’s anything is pretty impressive for our humble lighthouse.
And here’s another way of looking at it: historically, Barnegat Light State Park hosted zero to one pairs. Now we’ve got seven (and it’s still early!) Since the creation of Plover Park, we’ve multiplied by x 7 (and way more than that if you consider how much more likely the chicks being hatched now, in the new restored habitat, are to survive and become future breeders themselves, just like Secretariat, and his mom Marty Bird, who were both hatched in Plover Park!)
Imagine you wake up tomorrow morning, check your bank account, and see you had seven times the amount of money you thought you had. Imagine you could have bet on a sure thing yesterday at the Derby, and that horse paid 7 to 1. That’s my horse, Plover Park, baby.
I like those odds. And trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I spent my childhood at the track!
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Bonus Plover Park Trivia: Secretariat was hatched in 2024 as part of a very rare double clutch. His parents Lindsey Buckingham & Marty Bird were showing off that hot summer in the park. After successfully hatching, raising and fledging a single chick (Abraxos, a legend who will have to be the subject of another post), Lindsey & Marty said “hold my beer” and proceed to hatch, raise and fledge another two chicks, Secretariat & Seabiscuit, in a whole, new nest (very rare, the magic of Plover Park is unstoppable)! With two nests in one season, Lindsey & Marty were clearly trying to goose the numbers. And also clearly, it worked! You can’t make this stuff up. Plover Park is a gem.