A Plover for Alexander Wilson
BIRDS OF NANTUCKET
by Kenneth Turner Blackshaw
Nantucket birders have a list of birds we haven't seen here but expect to

find. The list includes birds like Cave Swallow, Boat-tailed Grackle, Mississippi Kite, Eurasian Collared Dove, Monk Parakeet and until recently, this week's bird, the Wilson's Plover.

"Plover" is one of those words that birders squabble over. Some rhyme it with "clover." Most Nantucketers think it rhymes with "lover." We generally agree on how to pronounce "Wilson."

This species is one of four named for Alexander Wilson. Scottish-born Wilson moved to the U.S. in 1794, developed a passion for bird study and began work on a series of books illustrating all North American birds. It's felt that his meeting with the young John James Audubon in Louisville, Kentucky in 1810, inspired Audubon on his career as a bird painter.

Although most Americans now know Audubon's name, Wilson has twice as many bird species named for him as well as a scientific genus of wood warblers. To be fair, Audubon had three until the birding gurus lumped Audubon's and Myrtle Warblers together calling them "Yellow-rumped."

Wilson's Plover became known to science when Wilson collected (shot) one in May of 1813 at Cape May on the southern tip of New Jersey, the northern edge of its breeding range. His friend, George Ord, named the species for him after Wilson's death in 1813.

Plovers are shorebirds, members of the family Charadriidae based on a Greek word meaning 'gully.' This refers to the simple scrape in the sand that is the basis for their nesting sites. There are over 60 species worldwide and we expect to see five each year on Nantucket. The very vocal Killdeer that you may often hear whistling its name high in the air over the Landfill is actually a plover.

Wilson's Plovers love saltwater beaches and you are unlikely to find one more than 100 yards from the shore. On Nantucket we commonly see a very similar bird, the Semipalmated Plover. These are small, almost sparrow-sized birds with dark brown backs and a single ring around their neck, white underneath. When they run, it seems like they glide along the ground atop rapidly moving legs.

Wilson's are an inch or two longer than Semipalmateds but size doesn't always matter. What you do notice is a larger looking head and the very robust black bill. If there are Semipalmated Plovers nearby they look more delicate.

The plover that gets all the publicity here is the Piping. Piping Plovers are almost white. We call them "dry sand" plovers since they blend in so well on the upper beaches. Semipalmated Plovers are much more common and known as "wet sand" plovers, more the color of the mudflats.

Wilson's Plovers are threatened in their own right. The National Audubon Society estimates the U.S. population to be only around 6,000 birds. When numbers get this low it doesn't take too much disruption to push them over the edge. These rather trusting little birds are competing with humans for access to the coast. Everyone wants to live on the beach it seems and small brown birds are easily ignored in our lust for an ocean view.

These 6,000 birds nest on seashores from Virginia around the southeastern U.S. The males arrive on the breeding beaches first and make several scrapes in the sand where they think a potential mate would be happy. When Mrs. Right arrives she picks one of those spots and subsequently lays three eggs that require over three weeks to hatch. This is a time of great risk since the eggs sit on the open beach with only the mother to protect them. A coastal storm or predation from crows, raccoons or the like may cause a restart of the cycle or perhaps the loss of a year's reproduction.

Studies by the Nature Conservancy show typical nesting success to be no more than 40 percent with 80 percent of the failures related to human activity. We just can't seem to keep off the beaches and too often loose dogs accompany us. When the chicks hatch they are mobile within a few hours and three weeks later, if lucky, they are airborne.

The breeding range of this species no longer extends north into Maryland or New Jersey where Wilson encountered it first almost 200 years ago. Still we find them wandering, particularly after the nesting season. Two years ago one spent the summer on South Beach in Chatham on the Cape.

Wilson's Plover flew from our "most wanted" list to our "recently discovered" list in June of 2005 when Edie Ray found one and photographed it at Smith's Point. Finding a bird like this that is new to the island is one of the exciting parts of the birding hobby. Particularly with the power of today's digital cameras almost anyone can make meaningful contributions to our knowledge of the natural world.

You have a chance of finding one of these large, thick-billed plovers patrolling our beaches between now and the end of September. I

George C. West creates illustrations for these articles.

The Maria Mitchell Association sponsors bird walks on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 6:30 a.m. and Saturday mornings starting at 8 a.m., from the corner of Vestal and Milk Streets. There is a fee for non-members.

To hear about rare birds, or to leave a bird report call the Massachusetts Audubon hot line at 1-781-259-8805.

Find more about Birding Nantucket on the web at http://k-blackshaw.com/BN/ BN.htm