Today, 13 July 10, the Milford Point (Francis St) spit and the contiguous Cedar Beach hosted around 34 Piping Plover. Eight were chicks (no doubt a Cedar Beach quartet and two each from the spit exclosures), the others about evenly divided between adults and fledglings. Clearly, the spit is a staging point for PPs before they make the trip south--a destination potentially ominous because of the Gulf oil disaster. Also, other shorebirds are starting to gather along the coast, including today about 100 Semipalmated Sandpipers. Here is an adult male PP, a very aggressive defender of his chicks, and one of his brood.
Here's a video of a few of the Semipalmated Sandpipers--now on their southward migration-- on the spit foraging with three Piping Plover chicks spit's eastern edge:
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