Part 52

C. A. Bobbins (1919) describes further the behavior of the young birds thus:

Of course it frequently happens that there is no time for concealment. Then the young birds attempt to escape by running, the tiny legs working with surprising rapidity and carrying them over the ground so swiftly and smoothly that they looked like balls of down blowing before the wind. Also, if their escape up the beach is cut off and they continue to be closely pressed, they do not hesitate to take to the water. Even those only a few hours out of the shell swim well and navigate their frail craft, if not with intelligence, at least in a direction away from the source of danger.

Plumages.--[AUTHOR’S NOTE: The downy young piping plover is sand colored above. The crown, back, wings, rump, and thighs are variegated with “cream buff,” “cartridge buff,” and grayish white, sprinkled or peppered with browns; on the wings the color deepens almost to “chamois.” The forehead is buffy white; there is a more or less distinct V-shaped mark of dark brown in the center of the crown and a circle of small brownish tips around the edge of it. The wings and thighs are marked with brown spots. A white collar encircles the hind neck, and the entire under parts are white. The juvenal plumage appears first on the scapulars and sides of the breast, then on the remaining underparts, back, and crown; the last parts to become feathered are the throat, belly, and rump; then the wing quills appear, and lastly the tail. In fresh juvenal plumage the feathers of the crown and mantle are “drab gray” or “smoke gray,” broadly tipped with “pinkish buff,” giving a decidedly pinkish tone at first; but these pink tips soon fade and wear away, leaving a dull-gray crown and mantle, faintly mottled with pale tints of buffy and dusky. The black bands on the forehead and neck are entirely lacking.

The first winter plumage is acquired by a limited body molt early in the fall and by wear and fading of much of the plumage that is retained. It is like the adult winter except for the worn and faded edgings on what juvenal feathers are retained, mainly wing coverts and scapulars. A partial prenuptial molt early in the spring produces a nuptial plumage which is practically adult.

Adults have a complete molt in late summer and fall--August to October--and a partial prenuptial molt in late winter and spring, mainly in March. In winter plumage the crown and mantle are “pale ecru drab,” without the pale edgings, with no black frontal band, and with a restricted brownish instead of black collar. The black frontal band and the black collar, characteristic of the nuptial plumage, are usually acquired in March; the extent of the black collar increases with age and the complete collar probably indicates an old bird.]

Food.--Arthur H. Howell (1924) says: “The food of this plover, as indicated by the contents of four stomachs secured in Alabama, consists principally of marine worms, fly larvae, and beetles.” E. H. Forbush (1925) lists the following: “Insects, crustaceans, mollusks, and other small marine animals and their eggs.”

The feeding habits of the piping plover as it hunts for food along our beaches are characteristic. In marked contrast to the nervous haste of the sanderling and the rapid darting about with lightning-like thrusts of the bill of the smallest sandpipers, the behavior of the plover is leisurely, and as they pick up food from the sand the movements of the head are deliberate. Three or four may sweep down the beach together, close to the sand, but when they alight, after a moment of stillness, they separate, each bird running a little way, isolating itself from its companions (another point of difference from the sanderling, etc., which in migration tend to keep close in a flock while feeding). Generally they begin at once to hunt for food. They run a short distance, then pause and stare at the sand with neck a little outstretched, head tilted a bit to one side, perhaps looking for a movement to show where food is, for often, leaning farther forward, they pick something from the sand. As they run over the beach--a run and a pause, another run and another scrutinizing pause, often changing direction to catch up a bit of food--the birds suggest very strongly a robin feeding on a lawn and the resemblance is strengthened when the plover seizes a 3-inch-long worm and drags it from beneath the sand, pulling slowly and carefully lest it break, and swallows it whole.

Behavior.--Their actions while feeding are apparently identical with those of the semipalmated plover, and the flight of the two birds is similar if not exactly the same. Their flight is wilder than that of the sanderling, for example, which drives steadily along; they twist and turn more often and tilt from one side to the other, giving the impression of extreme swiftness and agility.

Descriptions of the action of the sitting bird when disturbed differ very little. The bird is invariably wary and steals off before the intruder comes near, leaving him in doubt as to the existence of a nest. After the eggs are hatched, however, their actions change completely, and the parents display the utmost concern for the safety of their young. In the following quotation from his notes, E. H. Forbush describes graphically this behavior, and also shows that even in the early days of the young bird’s life the parents do not feed them. Mr. Forbush says:

A colony of piping plovers on the same beach had been much reduced in numbers but the behavior of one pair showed that they had young on the beach. We saw one plover and then another fluttering along the ground like young or crippled birds. Their actions might deceive a novice, but by watching them with a glass, we soon saw that they were adult birds. They threw themselves on the ground, breast downward, and, drooping the flight feathers or primaries, raised and agitated the shorter secondaries, until the motion resembled the fluttering pinions of young or wounded birds, meantime pushing themselves along over the sand with their feet. As the wings were not spread, the long primary quills were not noticeable, and so the imitation of the struggles of a helpless bird was almost perfect. Immediately we began a careful search for the nest, looking in all the usual hiding places in or under the tufts of beach grass, but no nest could we find. As the old birds continued their plaintive cries and circled about, we extended our search, expecting to find some half-grown young flattened out somewhere on the beach. Finally, by hunting over the sand we found on the open beach, a nest exactly like that of the least tern. A few little pebbles had been grouped in a slight hollow, and there, partly beside and partly on the pebbles, lay three lovely little downy chicks and one egg. We attempted to photograph the parents, but they would not come to the young; and, as the little ones had already begun to run, about, we sunk an old barrel in the beach, and put them and the egg in it, that we might know where to find them on the morrow.

The day was foggy and cold, and during the night a thunderstorm drenched the earth; but the next morning the egg had disappeared, and four lively youngsters were running around in our barrel. They were now so active, that if one were liberated it would be rather difficult to catch it, while if hidden, it would be almost impossible to find it.

We kept them there two days, until we made sure that the parents never fed them. They brooded them quite constantly, but brought no food whatever, and we made certain that the young were able and willing to find their own food within 24 hours after they were out of the shell. It was seen that unless they were liberated from the barrel they would soon starve to death.

C. A. Bobbins (1919) in a study of a colony of piping plovers breeding in Massachusetts lays stress on the communal feeling that he noted in the birds. He says that the feeling--

manifests itself in a marked degree; as when, at a threat of danger, more than two adults join in driving a single brood up the beach and into the safety which the concealing color of the dry sand furnishes.

It is shown again by the number of old birds that attempt to distract attention from the same brood or even from a detached individual by feigning; creeping off with wings outstretched and fluttering, tail fanned and dragging or, if the need requires more extreme measures, collapsing utterly a short distance away as if completely exhausted.

Voice.--The piping plover’s home is blue and gray and white; on one side is the long line of the horizon over a large lake or the sea, on the other the long line of the sand hills. It is a land the same the world over, wherever the sea meets the white, shifting sand. The sea slides back and forth over the hard smooth wet shining beach; above the reach of the tide is the dry, pale gray, pebbly upper beach with here and there a few strands of beach grass growing in it, and higher up are the dunes which mark on the land side the boundary of the plover’s home.

Walk along the water’s edge and, although the sea may be pounding on the shore and a northerly gale howling about our ears, we shall hear the plover’s voice; a soft musical moan, we can not tell from where, but clear and distinct above the sound of waves and wind. The note has a ventriloquial quality and it is often our first intimation that a piping plover is near, for the soft gray of the bird’s plumage matches the sandy background, whereas the note is pervasive and attracts our attention by its strangeness.

Aretas A. Saunders sends me the following summary of this plover’s notes. He says:

The commonest call I have noted is the one rendered in the books as peep-lo. It is lower pitched than most of the shore-bird voices, a clear melodious whistle, and generally rendered peep peep peeplo. The peep is usually a tone or a tone and a half higher pitched than the lo and I have one record where it is three tones and a half higher. I have one or two records where the second note slurs upward, the effect like peep-loay and suggesting the peeawee of the wood pewee. Another sort of note I have several records of I do not find described in books. This is a series of short sweet notes, more rapid than the others, nine or ten notes in a series. They are either all on the same pitch, or grading slightly downward in pitch toward the end, and they are sometimes followed by the peep-lo notes, at least in flight.

J. T. Nichols says in his notes:

When nesting the piping plover is rather noisy. The thought of its plaintive, rather mellow whistled notes, queep, queep, queeplo, etc., which perhaps have an analogy with song, takes me back to the sand dunes of Cape Cod standing in the dazzling sunshine, where I first became familiar with this species a number of years ago. At other times of year piping plover are rather silent. Their whistled flight note hee-hu, with falling inflection at the end, is not loud or striking, and suggests that of the semipalmated plover, reversed.

Gayle Pickwell (1925) in a study of the breeding habits “on a strip of sandy beach at Capital Lake near Lincoln” [Nebraska] says:

The most interesting thing about the piping plovers was their activities when one was near the nest. As an observer approached the nest he would be met by one of the plovers dropping down out of nowhere, uttering its sharp kee-wee, kee-wee and striving its utmost to lead one away. It would then run briskly across the sand and disappear suddenly from sight when it stopped to crouch down and utter its long-drawn whooaah, whooaah.

The variety of their cries and calls was amazing.

At almost any period, while we were in the neighborhood, one of the birds could be observed flying here and there with slow, wide wing beats, uttering a rapid kuk, kuk, kuk, kuk. It would shortly alight and wind it up with a long-drawn, weird whooaah, whooaah that seemed to come from nowhere in particular. The distress cries while one was near the nest were confined chiefly to a sharp kee-ah, kee-ah. The reason for their name of “piping” became very apparent at such times.

The kuk mentioned by Mr. Pickwell is seemingly analogous to a common note which the semipalmated plovers use as they carry on their harmless running flights along the beach--a sort of rattling cackle of short notes somewhat suggesting the call of the red crossbill. These utterances are evidently expressions of a heightening in the emotional state of these closely related plovers.

John A. Farley (1919) describes a mating song accompanying courting activities. He says:

I noticed a group of three, two of which chased each other around just like two robins fighting over a female. Some flew around rather low over the beach (some of them rather close to me), in apparent sexual excitement, and uttered notes while on the wing. These were different from the usual mellow, rather low notes which the birds were uttering more or less all the time while on the sand. Their notes on the wing were higher in tone and rather long drawn out, and mixed in with them were some little chuckles. The whole might be described as some sort of a mating song.