An Introduction
An Introduction
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Newburyport Birder's Plum Island Bird Sightings Official Checklist for Parker River NWR Tide and Current Predictor for the Merrimack River (new per reader request) |
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A Little Bit About the Piping Plover
Check out my essay about piping plovers and Plum Island, A Day at the Beach, in Issue 3 of the The Bridge Review: Merrimack Valley Culture. I've been keeping an online journal about my experiences as a plover warden at Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island in Massachusetts since 1996. Have a look at some past entries -- the beach, the plovers, and the people make for new stories all the time. No two are alike. These archival entries are pre-blogging so they''re individual files in an online journal format. This index will help you find diary entries for each year.
Note: The Plover Warden Diaries are part of a larger journal so you may encounter some content not directly related to the piping plover. (But I'm told readers enjoy that. :-)) |
The
piping plover is a small shorebird the color of dry sand. It
looks like a windup toy as it runs in crazy zigzags along
the wrack line looking for food. The plover's nesting habits
- a scrape in the sand just above the wrack line - put it in
conflict with humans who like the same areas of the beaches
for our summer recreation. The piping plover is listed as
"federally threatened" in the US and "endangered" in Canada.
Efforts are underway in both the United States and Canada to
protect the nesting areas and bring back the piping
plover.