I’ve learned more than I could ever calculate about piping plovers from Michelle Stantial. But more than anything, Michelle showed me that piping plovers are kind of dumb. Often pathetic. And occasionally, really, really gross.
Every time I’m composing a Reading, and I feel myself getting all weepy, and teary-eyed, and a little too earnest about these “precious treasures of the shore,” I can sense a tiny Michelle standing on my shoulder, reminding me of some bird we’ve known, or thing we saw, or showing me some photo where a piping plover was being… well… not that.
So I fully support her well-known signature of giving really awful names to piping plovers. Far from being insults, this tendency of hers is simply a reflection of how real and how intimate her work with them has been. She doesn’t wax poetic about piping plovers; she gets sh&* on all over by them. These are real animals. To put them on too high of a pedestal actually steals some dignity from them.
Recently, when we were out trapping as many of the unbanded adults in the park as we could, we were admiring the new, very posh, hand-sewn bags Emily had crafted from fancy fabrics to hold the birds in. I (half) jokingly suggested we should make some out of old tighty-whiteys for next season. Because it would make a great conservation photo.
And with that, we had the perfect, Stantial-approved names for the new pair she was banding at the moment: Tighty Whitey and Grannypanty. Of course, these names were not in NestStory for more than five minutes before people were txting outraged protests. Things escalated quickly, and within 24 hours, state officials were pulling the nuclear option and actually vetoing these names. A long negotiation process began… maybe “Granny” would be O.K… maybe something like “Boxer” would be cute… on and on it went.
But Michelle said it best when she made her closing arguments: “I mean, if we are not naming at least one pair piping plovers after underpants, then, guys, what are we really doing here?” She made a fair point.
Granny & Whitey are now due to hatch, imminently. They might even be hatching now as I type this. They are one of our few pairs without an exclosure and without cameras.
So yesterday, Elly & I carefully checked the eggs to prepare for the hatch. As we got close, we saw something really striking.
It’s a bit subtle in the photos, but both of the eggs in this two-egger nest are duo-tone. There is an almost perfectly clean line where the bottom 30-40% of each egg is significantly lighter in color than the other side. It’s really odd.
Passing these photos around, most of us remember seeing similar discoloration at some point, but usually just in one egg, and not so clean or perfect. They look like someone half-colored them on purpose, dipping the bottoms carefully into a bowl of Easter egg dye. Most likely, the coloration comes from some split or separation of air and liquid inside the egg.
None of us can remember for sure what the outcome of these eggs were, but my recollection was that one never hatched (Giantsbane’s) and one produced a malformed chick who hatched very late, couldn’t walk so well, and didn’t last more than a day (Jimin’s)
I will note that one of those eggs in the above photo is starring: you can see tiny, white cracks where a recently-alive chick was (at the very least) beginning to hatch and trying to break the eggshell from the inside.
We’ll just have to wait and see what the outcome is.
But in the meantime, I now can’t unsee the image that came to mind when I saw these unique eggs. In a too-perfect-to-make-up coincidence, Tighty Whitey and Grannypanty’s two-tone eggs look like they are wearing underpants. In fact, they are dead ringers for the beloved (?!) children’s book character, Captain Underpants.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Say something kind