The beach nesting bird season is only a few months long, and its success or failure each summer steers our favorite species either towards or away from extinction. So it’s tough to contain the urgently burning desire to try everything and anything you can think of to help them fledge just a few more chicks each season.
But with species as preciously precarious as piping plover, you really can’t afford to take too many risks. Even the best laid plans can backfire tragically. No one wants that to happen, and certainly no one wants that responsibility on their shoulders. I have a hundred terrible ideas about things we could try to help the piping plover. Thank goodness there are a hundred laws and a hundred more-experienced-people-than-me to stop me from trying them!
But a few years ago I discovered a loophole. If you really, really want to test out a new idea, just ask if you can try it with oystercatchers. Because nobody cares about those big, dumb, noisy oystercrackers! I’m joking, of course, but the reality is that oystercatchers are more abundant and slightly less threatened, yet are still a good proxy and often suffer from the same problems just as senselessly as the piping plover. Plus, who doesn’t want a bunch of extra oystercatcher babies running around Barnegat Light?
Employing this loophole last summer, I teamed up with Kashi & Emily from NJFW to test out a new fox deterrent at oystercatcher nests in Barnegat Light. They are called “Foxlights (TM)” and were invented by a little, old Australian couple to help protect livestock. They are well-built, solar powered, and importantly, use a random combination of strobes, flashes, and spinning lights that mimic the look of human activity. We sit them on a simple, lightweight aluminum t-post so they can be easily moved around to keep the fox on their furry little toes.
They seemed like a no brainer to try in the park, yet there was one big unknown risk left: how would the oystercatchers respond to lights flashing in their face all night long? Would they abandon their nests?
To mitigate that risk, I set up a live camera that allowed me watch as the flashing lights started up just after sundown, and to pan to the oystercatcher nest to see the reaction. I watched from my car, prepared to run out there and pull the lights. Here is the video I took that night.
Cool as a cucumber, not a care in the world. He probably thought it was just another boat coming through the inlet!
Since then we’ve used these flashers effectively, and even tested them at an extremely perilous piping plover nest in Island Beach State Park. Tracking around these nests showed fox indeed going out of their away to avoid the flashers.
Now some will surely ask here, “Why don’t you just trap the fox?”
We don’t even need to get into any biological, ethical, or even spiritual discussions about trapping. My answer is simply, “You try it!” Anyone with a fox-riddled farm can tell you: it’s tough, time consuming, and expensive. Even if you are successful, a new fox could waltz right in to take the place of the one you just removed. As I said at the beginning, the season is simply too short. Our birds just don’t have that kind of time.
Simple, safe, quick to deploy, and non-lethal. Flashers don’t hurt anybody.
So what’s the downside? Cost! At $159 each, they are not cheap. But so far, they have proven to be extremely well made in the areas that count: water proofing and solar power. If the internal batteries can last several years, and we continue to get the opportunity to reuse them multiple times per season, the actual cost per nest could easily get down to a few dollars per nest.
Yet as we hit a record number of nests in Plover Park, with more nests still forming, we are already out of flashers for this season.
Would you consider helping out our beach nesters this summer?
I don’t care if you love the oystercatchers, the fox, or me! A (fully tax deductible) donation made to The Little Egg Foundation right now could save an oystercatcher nest, a fox, and my sanity. This is a great opportunity to join the party that is Plover Park and help make a direct difference this summer. Heck, I’ll even let you know which birds get your flashers and follow up with you about how it all worked out!
Support your local Flashers. Because it’s looking more and more like flashers don’t hurt anyone. They actually help!