Nebraskaland

May 2023 • Nebraskaland 35 for invertebrates at the water's edge. Some mines become lakeshore housing developments, which continue to host nesting piping plovers. Amidst all the mining machinery and residential activity, the plovers hatch and raise chicks that will hopefully boost the declining population. The Tern and Plover Conservation Partnership exists to help, facilitating cooperation between the sand and gravel companies, developers, homeowners and researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. As a graduate student at UNL, I work with the Partnership to protect and monitor piping plovers, their nests and chicks during the summer until they migrate south. By using leg bands, researchers keep track of plovers like 56A. With only one year of records for 56A, we don't know much about his life yet, but we do know more about many others. Most plovers from Nebraska spend the winter on beaches in the Gulf of Mexico and on the Atlantic Coast. If someone spots one of our piping plovers, the leg bands tell us which bird it is. In the summers, I record which birds return, some of them raising their fourth or fi fth brood of chicks in so many years. Each time someone sees a bird, we add another line to its story. Most of these stories are archived in a database and compiled in TPCP's annual reports at ternandplover.unl. edu. Over the years, with more than 800 birds banded, we have compiled a lot of data. But it isn't just data that can be summarized in a table. They are the life stories of piping plovers like 56A, who nest and raise chicks in unlikely places and migrate more than a thousand miles to do it all over again. Piping Plover No. 89 Consider piping plover 89. Our first record of 89 comes from 2010, when he raised a nest at a lakeshore housing development near Schuyler. The neighborhood was pretty quiet plover-wise that year, with 89's nest the sole plover residence amid the houses being built on the sand next door. In the second week of May, 89 and his mate chose a spot farthest from the home construction, dug a shallow depression into the sand and settled in. For four weeks, the pair took turns incubating four eggs and caring for their nest. During that time, the Partnership discovered them and placed a protective predator exclosure and informative signage around the nesting area. They also put colorful bands on 89's legs: metal, yellow and gray on the left leg with light blue, green and green on the right. On a Monday in mid-June, the eggs hatched. Eighty- nine worked together with his mate to teach the chicks how to find insects in the sand and how to hide from predators in the small shadows under cottonwood seedlings. When the chicks were six days old, researchers weighed them — each about 7.2 grams — and gave them leg bands of their own. Marking chicks allows us to track the impact of plovers through generations. We don't know much about 89's life in 2011 nor 2012. Our records pick back up in 2013, when the Partnership team found him on a Platte River sandbar near Ashland. While the researchers didn't identify 89 with a nest that summer, they observed him on the same sandbar three more times between June and July. The sandbar is about 45 miles, as the plover flies, from 89's prior summer spot in Schuyler, and likely quite a different environment than the lakeshore housing development. Instead of home construction and human neighbors, 89 spent the summer of 2013 next to rushing river waters. By 2014, plover 89 was back on the nest. This time, he made his summer home at a third kind of habitat: a sand and gravel mine. We don't know what happened with 89's nest that year. By June 17, the nest disappeared a week before its expected hatch date. Eighty-nine was still around by June 23, but no chicks were seen. ABOVE: Plover held in the author's hands, recently captured from the nest for banding. KATE ASMUS OPPOSITE: A piping plover nest is a shallow bowl-like depression in the sand, which the parents line with pebbles. Most plover nests contain 3-5 eggs. The speckled eggs blend in with the sand, camoufl aged from predators. ELSA FORSBERG

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