[texbirds] Re: Fw: plovers have abandoned Mustang Island beach in Port Aransas area
- From: Cecilia-home <criley02@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "cooksey@xxxxxxxxxx" <cooksey@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2013 21:43:30 -0600
Though I have not studied the effects of beach raking/scraping on plovers I can
confirm that there are ample plovers (Piping, Snowy and Black-bellied) in the
Port A area. I participated in their CBC on Monday and our boat teams found
hundreds of each of these species on the bay shores. The tides have been low
and there are scads of exposed shorelines, evidently filled with the food these
birds love. Unfortunately most all of these areas are only accessible by boat.
Life is better with birds!
Cecilia M Riley
GCBO, Lake Jackson, TX
Sent from my iPad
> On Dec 19, 2013, at 10:10 AM, "Mel Cooksey" <cooksey@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Bert,
> I doubt if this is a call for major alarm, although the beach scraping
> is idiotic. It is not uncommon to drive miles of Mustang or North
> Padre Island beaches on certain days when virtually zero small
> plovers are present, and other days they are quite numerous. I have
> never understood this, but that is the way it has been for many years.
>
> On the days when none are found on the beaches, there are
> usually large concentrations somewhere along the back side of
> the islands in the Laguna Madre. One spot of concentration can
> be the broad flats just south of Charlie's Pasture I. We have
> counted upwards of 200 PIPLs there in winter.
>
> Mel Cooksey
> Corpus Christi
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bert Frenz" <bertf@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2013 7:53 AM
> Subject: [texbirds] plovers have abandoned Mustang Island beach in Port
> Aransas area
>
>
>> Where have all the plovers gone? Far, far, away!
>> I have visited a portion of Mustang Island, southern Port Aransas beach,
>> for
>> many years and am always excited to see many Piping Plovers. I even know
>> some by name, so to speak, since I can identify individuals by the color
>> bands and I know their perseverance in feeding within marked territories.
>> It was not unusual to see 10-15 in a one-mile walk.
>>
>> Yet for the past 3 days, including 4 long beach walks, I did not see a
>> single Piping Plover or Snowy Plover and only one Black-bellied Plover. I
>> met up with Tony Amos on one of his regular beach surveys and he told me
>> the
>> same story. The plovers have abandoned the Port Aransas portion of the
>> Mustang Island beach. For years, I had also noticed that they did not
>> visit
>> the Corpus Christi portion of the beach, between here and Mustang Island
>> State Park, a section always bulldozed "clean" in front of the hotels and
>> condos.
>>
>> What changed this year is that the beaches are now being cleaned on the
>> Port
>> Aransas section. I appreciate the jetsam-flotsam trash removal, but not
>> the
>> scrapping of the beaches of all traces of seaweeds. It leaves a
>> "pristine"
>> sand beach, enticing to beach goers, but not to plovers. While the world
>> has plenty of Black-bellied Plovers, not so for Piping Plovers. Removing
>> one of their prime winter-feeding sites may not boon well for them.
>>
>> Bert
>>
>> -------------------------------
>>
>> Bert Frenz
>>
>> Bert2@xxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>> author, A Birder's Guide to Belize, 2013
>>
>> Birds of the Oaks & Prairies of Texas
>>
>> www.bafrenz.com <http://www.bafrenz.com/birds/>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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