The Birds are Back
Presque Isle is on pins and needles waiting to see if their favorite visitors will be returning this spring.
Mary Birdsong — yes, that’s really her name — sounds like a teenager falling in love when she describes the moment she saw a male and female piping plover together for the first time at Presque Isle State Park in Erie, Pennsylvania. “I turned into jelly,” she says. “My heart was racing. My knees were weak. I had to compose myself.”
That was May 2017 and, it turns out, the love affair was just getting started.
As a shore bird monitor for the Erie Bird Observatory, it’s Birdsong’s job to hike the 4-mile roundtrip to the 67-acre Gull Point five days a week to observe the birds. Less than two weeks after her first sighting, she saw a second pair of plovers nesting on Gull Point.
Conservationists everywhere cheered for the tiny birds, which are among the rarest birds in the Great Lakes region, with fewer than 80 known breeding pairs. Prior to 2017, the birds hadn’t nested on Presque Isle since the 1950s.
But the good news is that the birds keep coming back.
Nesting pairs of piping plovers made a return to Presque Isle State Park in 2018, and conservationists are hopeful the birds will return this summer. If they do, Birdsong will be on the front lines of protecting the nests, which are built on sand.
Once, during a storm that pushed water high onto Gull Point, Birdsong watched in horror as a nest washed away. She notified the team, which quickly went into action. A biologist braved the weather to come by boat to scoop the eggs from the water. Two of those eggs later hatched at the University of Michigan Biological Station’s piping plover captive-rearing facility. They eventually were released into the wild on Lake Superior.
The other nest fared much better, and soon Birdsong was observing two cotton ball-sized hatchlings tottering around the beach under their parents’ watchful eyes.
Last year, that same original nesting pair — affectionately nicknamed “Jerry” and “Jean” after Jerry McWilliams and the late Jean Stull-Cunningham, both legendary Presque Isle conservationists — returned. And, much to Birdsong's delight, they were joined by a pair of nesting common terns, a species which hasn’t nested regularly in Pennsylvania since 1966.
It’s not just happenstance that endangered birds have begun returning to Presque Isle. Conservation groups have been working for more than a decade to bring endangered birds back to the area, including a 33-acre vegetation-control program on Presque Isle to make the spot more habitable to the shore-nesting birds.
Seeing the plovers return made her giddy, says Birdsong, who had a picture of the male piping plover tattooed on her ankle. “I was very excited,” she said. “I felt like a parent — ‘I’m so happy to have you back — now give me grandkids.’”
Jerry and Jean complied: four chicks were born in June 2018. Birdsong, who on April 15 began making her daily trek to Gull Point to watch for them, is hopeful for their return this spring.
That was May 2017 and, it turns out, the love affair was just getting started.
As a shore bird monitor for the Erie Bird Observatory, it’s Birdsong’s job to hike the 4-mile roundtrip to the 67-acre Gull Point five days a week to observe the birds. Less than two weeks after her first sighting, she saw a second pair of plovers nesting on Gull Point.
Conservationists everywhere cheered for the tiny birds, which are among the rarest birds in the Great Lakes region, with fewer than 80 known breeding pairs. Prior to 2017, the birds hadn’t nested on Presque Isle since the 1950s.
But the good news is that the birds keep coming back.
Nesting pairs of piping plovers made a return to Presque Isle State Park in 2018, and conservationists are hopeful the birds will return this summer. If they do, Birdsong will be on the front lines of protecting the nests, which are built on sand.
Once, during a storm that pushed water high onto Gull Point, Birdsong watched in horror as a nest washed away. She notified the team, which quickly went into action. A biologist braved the weather to come by boat to scoop the eggs from the water. Two of those eggs later hatched at the University of Michigan Biological Station’s piping plover captive-rearing facility. They eventually were released into the wild on Lake Superior.
The other nest fared much better, and soon Birdsong was observing two cotton ball-sized hatchlings tottering around the beach under their parents’ watchful eyes.
Last year, that same original nesting pair — affectionately nicknamed “Jerry” and “Jean” after Jerry McWilliams and the late Jean Stull-Cunningham, both legendary Presque Isle conservationists — returned. And, much to Birdsong's delight, they were joined by a pair of nesting common terns, a species which hasn’t nested regularly in Pennsylvania since 1966.
It’s not just happenstance that endangered birds have begun returning to Presque Isle. Conservation groups have been working for more than a decade to bring endangered birds back to the area, including a 33-acre vegetation-control program on Presque Isle to make the spot more habitable to the shore-nesting birds.
Seeing the plovers return made her giddy, says Birdsong, who had a picture of the male piping plover tattooed on her ankle. “I was very excited,” she said. “I felt like a parent — ‘I’m so happy to have you back — now give me grandkids.’”
Jerry and Jean complied: four chicks were born in June 2018. Birdsong, who on April 15 began making her daily trek to Gull Point to watch for them, is hopeful for their return this spring.
Story:
Kara Murphy
2019 May/June