CONGRATS: We want to take a moment to send a hearty congratulations to our former Kane correspondent, Chuck Abraham, who wed his sweetheart Robyn Wells on Friday in Indiana, where Chuck is editor of The Lowell Tribune. We wish them a lifetime of happiness!
PLOVERS: A pair of federally endangered piping plovers are raising chicks on Presque Isle State Park’s Gull Point for the second year in a row.
In addition, a pair of state-endangered common terns are nesting on the same beach –– possibly the first time both species have nested there since the mid-20th century. The breaking news is giving conservationists a new glimpse of hope.
Gull Point is in the easternmost region of Presque Isle; the area covers about 300 acres. Conservationists have worked diligently to make the area magnanimous to attract more avian to raise fledging.
Game Commission Executive Director Bryan Burhans said, “It’s always gratifying when conservation partners team up for and bring back nesting birds that had been almost wiped out or lost in Pennsylvania’s past.”
A 2007 Pennsylvania piping plover recovery assessment imposed several improvement strategies –– including the removal of woody and invasive vegetation along the Gull Point Natural Area shoreline as an effort to increase potential for recolonization.
Upon their return between April and May, both common tern and piping plover males take to their nesting territories. After the eggs are laid in a (usually) stone-lined nest in the sand called a scrape, the pair share incubation duties for around a month.
Plover chicks are up and running shortly after their hatching while common terns, also able to walk shortly after hatching, tend to stay in or close to the nest and are fed by both parents. The first week is when they are most vulnerable. After then, their chances of survival start increasing. Until their wings develop and they learn to fly, which occurs a few weeks after hatching, chicks camouflage themselves from vehicles, predators, and pedestrians by “freezing” and crouching down in the sand.
