32 Nebraskaland • May 2023
By Elsa Forsberg
The Life of a
1,500 Miles and Going
Piping plover 56A on a beach at the Área de Protección de
Flora y Fauna (APFF) Yum Balam in Quintana Roo, Mexico.
FRANCISCO CABB, APFF YUM BALAM
zoom in again on my computer screen, just to make sure
the image is of a small shorebird called a piping plover.
Two plastic bands decorate the bird's legs like bracelets,
one gray and one blue. The combination of diff erent colored
bands serves as a coded name tag waiting to be deciphered.
Squinting at the blue band, I read the white engraved text.
56A.
I sit back and gape at my computer screen. I know that bird.
I held that bird in my left hand when I placed those bands on
his legs. Now he's 1,500 miles away.
The last time I saw 56A was at a sand and gravel mine near
Louisville, Nebraska. There, I watched him successfully hatch
a nest of four chicks. That was in June. By July 27, plover 56A
made a successful migration all the way to Quintana Roo,
Mexico, where he happened to be spotted by another biologist.
That's a pretty incredible journey for a bird that weighs only
50 grams. He'll do it again in a matter of months, making the
return trip for the nesting season in the summer, when I hope
to set eyes on him again and know that he's still alive.
As I record the sighting into a database, I wonder about
56A's future. Will he return to nest in the same place next
summer? Will his chicks survive? What will be the next
chapter of his story?
Banding Plovers
Piping plovers (Charadrius melodus) are listed as threatened
on the federal and Nebraska state endangered species lists,
and they live extraordinary lives. In the summer, piping
plovers breed in a handful of regions across North America,
including Nebraska. The basics for a piping plover nest are
sand and water. Historically, that meant river sandbars.
However, piping plovers have also found places to nest off the
river: sand and gravel mines. As a by-product of the aggregate
mining process, the mines incidentally provide fl at expanses
of sand surrounded by a small lake. With sand and water,
the piping plovers fi nd a spot to lay their nest and forage
I
