Piping Plover Babies!

Thursday afternoon's visit to Silver Sands State Park featured a special sight indeed. When I checked on the Piping Plover pair and their nest just east of the park, I was excited to see that their eggs have successfully hatched! So along with the two adults, there were four tiny baby plovers running around on the beach! Here's Dad, looking handsome as usual, with one of the new arrivals in the foreground:
 

I loooooove these little guys! It was such a treat to watch them scuttle around across the sand:
 

Hello baby plover, with your little cotton-ball body and tooth-pick legs:
 

 
Adorable as these guys are from the front, I think they might be even cuter from behind! Look at that little tail!
 

Plover chicks are precocial -- isn't that just the coolest word? -- which means that (like baby chickens, ducks, geese, etc., but unlike, say, robins) they're up walking and foraging for themselves almost as soon as they hatch. (I also just love how much "precocial" sounds like "precocious," which is absolutely a fitting description for these little guys.) These four babies were certainly handling themselves well, motoring around from spot to spot:
 

And snatching up food from the sand, just like Mom and Dad:
 

But even though these chicks were running around and feeding themselves, they still ran back to Mom every few minutes for some cuddle time:
 

Oof, four babies is a lot to fit under you!
 

There we go, all tucked in (more or less):
 

I read recently that only about 50 Piping Plover pairs are currently nesting in all of Connecticut (roughly the same number as in recent years). I'm so happy this plover family has made it to the hatching stage, and I just hope all four of these chicks grow up safely. Stay close to your parents, guys, and hopefully you'll be fine!

Here are a few other sights from my visit to the beach. The Killdeer pair is still tending eggs, but these babies should also be along soon:
 

A Fish Crow sat long enough for a quick portrait:
 

And some Glossy Ibises looked spectacularly rusty in the very last light from the setting sun:
 

What a great beach day!

End of the Week Beach Sights

I was at Silver Sands State Park on Friday, and it was lovely. No time for a detailed post -- I'm in the middle of packing right now! -- but here are a few quick sights from the visit that I wanted to share.

Pretty little Blue Toadflax (Nuttallanthus canadensis) was blooming at the edges between trees and beach:
 

And I got my first really good look at a Glossy Ibis (a species of "special concern" in Connecticut) as it foraged in the marshes -- glossy indeed!
 

That's quite the beak you've got there, bird:
 

Finally, this Groundhog appears to have made a home in the marsh -- I love the grumpy-old-man expression it's giving me in this picture!
 

It may be a little while before you hear from me again: On Tuesday, we're leaving for a week-long adventure in Florida! This trip will feature several days in Disney World (Paul's choice vacation spot), followed by a couple of days exploring some nearby natural areas. There will be awesomeness, and there will be animals.... And there's a very good chance I'll be making a post or two about the trip afterwards. Stay tuned!

Seaside Adventures with Birds in Siver Sands State Park

We live half an hour from the ocean (well, the Long Island Sound, more accurately), but we almost never go there. It's quite silly, actually. So yesterday Paul and I decided to remedy this situation, and we took a drive down to Silver Sands State Park, in Milford. This is a really great park, and we'd been there once before a couple of years ago, with great success. It has all the benefits of (free) sandy beaches and swimming, stretches of trails and boardwalks to explore, and, as it turns out, lots and lots of birds.

Right next to the strip of sand on the shoreline, and past some rocks, flat salty marshes like this one stretch on. The bird in the above picture is a Great Egret, an impressively big creature with a yellow beak and black legs. Wading birds like egrets and herons love this habitat.

Snowy Egrets -- the smaller cousins of Great Egrets -- abound here as well, hunting tiny fishes in the marches and wading among the tall grasses. This Snowy Egret was resting gracefully just off shore:

It even let me sneak close enough for a more detailed picture. Can you believe the glorious feathers on this bird?

Both Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets are listed as threatened species in Connecticut. They were hunted to extirpation or near-extirpation in the state in the early 20th century -- so their lovely plumes could decorate people's hats; blech -- and they didn't start breeding here again until the 1960s. As it turns out, Silver Sands State Park is an exceedingly important place for both of these threatened species, and here's why:

This is Charles Island, located about a half-mile from the park's shore. During low tide, a sandbar rises from the ocean to connect the island to land, but birds can easily fly across at any time. (You can just start to see the sandbar in that strip of light-colored ocean in the above picture.) In addition to being the supposed site of Captain Kidd's buried treasure, and reportedly haunted/cursed, the island serves as one of the three largest nesting sites in Connecticut for Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets, as well as other bird species. Such sites are rare strongholds for these birds, so well protected by the ocean. The park closes access to the island during the summer to help keep people from disturbing the nesting birds, although we did still see several people venturing out onto the sandbar while we were there. It was really cool to be near a place of such importance -- I wish the birds on the island the best of luck and many happy, healthy babies this summer and in the years to come!

So those are the egrets. How about some more birds?

I know almost nothing about seashore birds, since I spend most (actually, all) of my time inland and around fresh water, and this trip really showed me how big the holes in my knowledge are. I can do the two major gulls (I think), with some confidence -- you've got your standard big Herring Gull:

And your smaller Ring-billed Gull (this fellow insisted on poking around in our bags whenever I moved away):

But this one had me stumped for a little while -- I'm pretty sure it's a Laughing Gull, albeit without its full breeding plumage:

This group of little dippy birds is still a puzzle for me:

They're some sort of sandpiper, either Western or Semipalmated (I think), in the middle of their southbound migration. I have no idea how people identify these birds, because I sure can't tell the difference between pictures of the two species! I guess this is where practice comes in handy, but for now, "sandpiper" will just have to do. :P

Update 7/29/11: As one of my readers pointed out (thanks, Joe!), these might actually be Sanderlings, a small type of sandpiper. Boy, do I not know ocean birds! So I'll withhold identification for now, and maybe someday I'll be able to figure out what these little creatures are.

There were many other types of birds flying around, too, including the familiar Barn Swallow. These two individuals were actually sitting still, perched on reeds near the path:

And here's another new one for me, a Glossy Ibis (a species of special concern in Connecticut), whose dark coloring kept it so well hidden in the tall grasses that I didn't even see it until it flew away:

It was a very enjoyable trip, and a great way to remind myself that beaches are fun!

I'll close this post with two final pictures. This Herring Gull must've found something delicious in this large shell-plus-rock-thing with a seaweed tail:

Something worth smashing open from up high! Bombs away!

:D