Part 51

Breeding range.--Central and southern Europe, from France, Denmark, southern Sweden, southern Finland and 64° N. in Russia, south to the Mediterranean and its islands and Africa north of the Sahara. In Asia its range extends across Siberia to the Pacific and includes also Japan. In India and the Philippines, Hainan, and Formosa it is replaced by other subspecies. It does not breed in the British Isles, but nests in Madeira and the Canaries.

Winter range.--Winters in tropical Africa, south to the Gold Coast, Fernando Po, the lower Niger, Lakes Rudolf, Albert and Victoria Nyanza, and the Red Sea coast; in Asia to Arabia and India and also to the Sunday Islands and perhaps New Guinea.

Spring migration.--In south Spain it arrives about mid March and is widely distributed in April, while in the eastern Mediterranean the passage takes place in Crete and Corfu in April. On Heligoland it is only a rare straggler.

Fall migration.--The north German breeding birds leave for the south at the end of September. Farther south the presence of immigrants from the north among the breeding birds is seldom noted.

Casual records.--In the British Isles there are about 10 well-authenticated records; April (2), August (4), and October (1 or 2). The supposed records from Iceland and the Faroes are not authenticated. Gaetke only records 2 at Heligoland in 50 years.

Egg dates.--In northern Africa eggs have been found from March onward; in Spain and the Balearic Isles, March 16 (1 date), April 15 to 30 (3 dates), May 1 to 14 (4 dates), 15 to 30 (3 dates); late dates, June 12 and July 11. In France and Germany, May 3 to 17 (7 dates), 18 to 31 (8 dates); June 1 to 15 (5 dates); late dates, July 19 and 22.

CHARADRIUS MELODUS Ord

PIPING PLOVER

HABITS

Contributed by Winsor Marrett Tyler

Wilson and Audubon were familiar with the piping plover as a common summer resident on the sandy beaches of the Atlantic coast. Audubon found it breeding as far north as the Magdelen Islands and wintering abundantly on the coast of Florida.

During the years between the time of these early writers and the present, the species has been subjected to many seasons of spring and autumn shooting which, in the closing years of the nineteenth century, brought the bird nearly to the point of extinction.

It is readily seen why persistent shooting threatened this bird’s existence. Its breeding range on the coast extends for hundreds of miles in a northerly and southerly direction, but owing to the bird’s very restricted nesting site it is narrowed in many places to a strip of beach only a few yards wide. Fortunately legislation intervened and removed the smaller plovers from the list of game birds, so that at the present time the piping plover is fast becoming one of our common summer residents again.

Spring.--Compared to most of the waders, the piping plover has a short and safe migration route. Moving along the coast where spring is further advanced than in the interior of the country, and having to pass over no large bodies of water on its way to its breeding ground, the bird pushes northward early in the season, often arriving in New England during the last days of March, the first of the shorebirds to reach our beaches.

Courtship.--In his notes A. C. Bent describes the courtship thus: “I saw and heard the nuptial flight and song of this bird. He flew in large circles or figure 8s low over the back beach near the marsh for several minutes, giving constantly a peculiar twittering whistling song.” Another entry in his notes under date, May 20, reads: “Saw piping plover mating, two males following one female. They were running around her in crouching attitude, with wings spread and trailing and with tail spread in display, uttering whistling notes.”

I once saw a male bird come up behind a crouching female and stand at full height close to her with his breast feathers puffed out and head held high, his neck stretched upward so that it was long and slim, the bird both in posture and shape resembling an upland plover. For a minute or two he stood thus while his feet beat a rapid tatoo on the sand. In this attitude of display he appeared bright colored and conspicuous in contrast to the female and the band across his breast (complete in his case) stood out sharply defined against the adjacent snowy feathers.

Nesting.--The typical nesting site of the piping plovers is the belt of sand bordering lake or ocean well above high-water mark, where the surface is becoming diversified and pebble strewn and wisps of beach grass begin to grow. Here they lay their eggs, commonly with little preparation for their reception other than a slight hollowing of the light sand, but not infrequently they collect small stones, bits of shell, or driftwood and line their nests with them or lay them near by.

The following quotations indicate differences in the appearance of the nests. In a letter to Mr. Bent, Allen H. Wood describes a very unusual nest. He says: “The nest was a hollow scooped in a mass of sand which had been piled up to a height of nearly 10 inches. Whether the birds formed the pile or not, I do not, of course, know, but a very careful examination failed to show how else the pile could have been formed.” A. C. Bent speaks in his notes of finding at Dartmouth, Mass., “three nests containing four eggs each, all on a high, sandy and pebbly beach in the heart of a tern colony. The nests were hollows in the sand, profusely lined with broken pieces of white shell and were quite conspicuous.” E. W. Hadeler found on the shore of Lake Erie, at Painesville, Ohio, a paved nest. He says in his notes that there were “four eggs, almost the same color as the ground and stones, laid in a slight depression on some very small flat stones and around the nest were stones of all shapes and sizes.” Philipp and Bowdish (1917) in New Brunswick “found a small colony of breeding birds, five nests, each containing four eggs, being located. The nests were on sandy beach, some in the open, others among sparse clumps of beach grass. They were slight hollows in the sand, some quite unlined, others with a well-formed rim of bits of broken shell or slate.” In a letter to Mr. Bent, Edward R. Ford calls attention to some birds nesting in an unusual environment. He says:

At Dune Park, Ind., the piping plover, to the number of five or six pairs, has taken advantage of the widening of the beach (through the operations of a sand company which has removed part of the dunes) and lays its eggs at a considerable distance from the water’s edge. The old ridges formed by the tramway beds, from which the rails have been, for the most part, removed; the old cinder heaps, bits of scrap iron and other odds and ends of human labor, with here and there patches of vetch and coarse grass, seem well suited to its requirements.

In common with some of its near relatives, the piping plover has the habit of making additional hollows in the sand in the vicinity of the hollow in which its eggs are laid. These hollows have been termed cock nests and have been compared to the nests which the male of some of the wrens builds while his mate is sitting.

My notes, taken on Cape Cod in the company of Charles A. Robbins in mid April, refer to this subject:

After some 10 minutes, during which time the two birds stood motionless on the sand facing the wind, they began to move about, the male taking visible interest in the female and following her as she walked away. They came to a place back of the beach where stones lay sparsely scattered on the dry sand and little bunches of beach grass and patches of Hudsonia were growing. Here the male stopped at a spot between two stones, lowered his breast to the ground and kicked out alternately with his legs scratching the sand from beneath him. Then moving off a little way he did the same in another spot while the female came to the place between the stones and continued the hollowing process which he had begun. Nearly, if not quite, in time with their rapidly moving legs, the birds uttered a series of short, high-pitched whistles, all on the same note, having the piping quality of their common call. When the scratching stopped, the notes stopped.

During perhaps a quarter of an hour the birds continued to scratch and pipe until several little hollows had been begun and abandoned. The female, however, scratched for the most part in the hollow between the stones, digging it out to a depth of an inch. Soon this phase of activity passed off and the birds began to feed.

During the hour the birds were under observation neither one made its bobbing motion.

Eggs.--[AUTHOR’S NOTE: Four eggs are the almost invariable rule with the piping plover; rarely only three are laid in second sets, and I have found one set of five. They are ovate to short ovate in shape and have no gloss. The ground colors vary from “light buff” to “cartridge buff” or buffy white. They are sparingly, but quite evenly, marked with small spots, or fine dots, of blackish brown or black, and sometimes with a few underlying spots of “pallid purplish gray.” They are almost invisible on the sand or among small pebbles. The measurements of 71 eggs average 31.4 by 24.2 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =34.4= by 25.3, 31.8 by =26.4=, =29.2= by 23.8 and 30 by =23= millimeters.]

Young.--Gayle Pickwell (1925) describes in detail the hatching of an egg and ascertained that the young birds may leave the nest a few hours later. He says: “It soon refused to remain in the nest. Finally, it left, and while it was tottering insecurely away the parent bird came running up with little chuckles of solicitude.”

Alexander G. Lawrence, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, says in his notes:

Careful search of the sand spit revealed a number of small white moving points, which later search proved to be baby piping plovers. While I was chasing one it tripped, fell on its back, and lay as if stunned, deceiving me so completely that I turned to get my camera to make a close-up picture of the little fellow. No sooner had I moved away than he sprang up and ran pell-mell over the sand, and the chase commenced again.