It was a great honor to spend Mother’s Day on the beach with NestStory’s great mother, Michelle Stantial. Some of you might remember Michelle from endless, past readings where I followed her around and celebrated every little thing she did. She is legend here on RFTNS because if there is any one person who took this blog from being full of fun stories about Mac Daddy and useful info like water temps, to a bunch of sad stories about super endangered beach nesting birds and much-too-geeky bits about science stuff, it’s Michelle!
The first day I met her was over a decade ago, at Barnegat Light, when I took a now-infamous photo of the great scientist crying. It was mostly nerves; that day was the very first day of her multi-year project that would change how we all think about piping plovers, their habitats, their survival, and how we best might care for them. We would shed a lot more tears in those summers, constantly having to witness the harsh realities our local beach nesters suffer together.
While Todd Pover was already drawing out plans for Plover Park on the back of a napkin somewhere, and funds were getting lined up for such a project, the results of Michelle’s work were clear: something had to be done. Not only was Barnegat Light the saddest habitat in New Jersey, it was actually a “sink.” This means any chicks it produced had such a low chance of survival that it would be better for no plovers to nest here at all! Her work here, and her gigantic heart, have been a huge force pushing us all in the right direction.
As we walked through the park, we were, literally, walking in a dream. Our own dream. We dreamed of this place, many times, and here it actually is. We surely didn’t build it. But our dream came true regardless. I was struck by the thought that the only difference between a dream and a better world is a little bit of time and effort. Even sweeter when it’s someone else’s effort!
As we walked out through Plover Park, and she marveled about the incredible growth in numbers of beach nesters nesting here, and the rich abundance of diverse bird life attracted to it generally, what struck me the most was her awe at the most important point: how beautiful the park is. It truly is stunning. Plover Park has made Barnegat Light State Park better in every possible way it could have been made better. Even better than we’d dreamed!
But enough of that. Unbeknownst to me, there was work to do. Here I had thought that Michelle chose me to join her on her triumphant return to Plover Park because of all the great things we’ve done together, like creating NestStory, and The Little Egg Foundation. But nope. It turns out I was the only one dumb and desperate enough to spend my whole Sunday (Mothers’ Day no less) schlepping around the beach with her while she carefully trapped and banded the park’s unbanded adult plovers!
People always ask how she catches them for banding, and the answer is simple. The olde-fashioned “Wabbit Trap” from Looney Tunes. A box with a stick and string. What’s funniest about that is, today, the piece of wood Emily had provided (a paint stirrer) was a little too big, so Michelle had to search the beach and find an actual stick. Here’s how it works:
Step 3: You walk away slowly and let out the string, then find a place to hide. If there is no place to hide, you wear carefully camouflaged clothing to blend into the habitat naturally, usually not bright purples and turquoise with glitter on your face.
So that’s it. We managed to get 3 of Plover Park’s newest moms today. They are now banded ambassadors, and part of the long tradition of banding that all started right here with Michelle in Barnegat Light over a decade ago.
Allow me to introduce:
Happy Mother’s Day.
Say something kind