Category: Snowy Plovers

CFC Banded Snowy Plover Resighting!

9/23/2023

SFBBO Science Director Maddy Schwarz

For 20 years, SFBBO has surveyed the Western Snowy Plover, a federally listed species that usually lives on beaches but has found a home on the dry salt pond beds along our Bay. Because of it's protected status, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has set goals to restore plover numbers throughout the region. In addition, the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, a 50-year effort to return half of the Bay's salt ponds back to tidal marsh, has also established goals to increase plover numbers in the Bay Area. SFBBO is a part of a range-wide effort to study and help these birds by improving their habitat and banding and re-sighting them to learn where they go. As part of our 2023 California Fall Challenge (CFC), for the next four ...

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SFBBO Biologists Release Four Juvenile Snowy Plovers

7/1/2022

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By Education and Outreach Specialist Sirena Lao

Looking through one of the holes of the cardboard carrier, we can see two juvenile Snowy Plovers (small grayish-tan and white shorebirds) standing on a sheet in the carrier.

Juvenile Snowy Plovers in a carrier being transported to their release site.

This year has been eventful so far for Snowy Plovers and our biologists who study them here in the South San Francisco Bay. Western Snowy Plovers are small, pale shorebirds that breed along the Pacific Coast from Southern Washington to Baja California, as well as inland at alkali lakes. The Pacific Coast population of Western Snowy Plovers is federally listed as a threatened distinct population segment, with about 2,500 individuals. These birds typically breed on coastal sandy beaches, but with human development and disturbance, some birds have taken advantage of former salt evaporation ponds here in the Bay, a rather stark landscape that mimics salt panne habitat found in isolated areas of the coast and interior. These salt ponds now regularly support about 10% of the Pacific Coast population.

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Plover Rescue Kicks Off SFBBO’s 40th Anniversary - "Forty from the Field"

9/2/2021

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By Outreach and Communications Director Kristin Butler

The birds were 40 days old.

It was August 20th and I was at Eden Landing Ecological Reserve in Hayward, a haven for many bird species, including the three Western Snowy Plover juveniles patiently waiting in a plastic pet carrier that was their temporary home.

My colleague Ben Pearl, a biologist, held the carrier in one hand, a spotting scope slung over his other shoulder. He walked slowly across the moonscape ground, eyes peeled for movement that would let us know where the older plovers were hiding among white algae and shells. I followed a half step behind, our boots crunching softly on the dried earth.

SFBBO’s 40th Anniversary

The symbolism of their age was not lost on us. This fall the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory ...

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Intern Makes an Impact for Waterbirds and Joins Plover Team

3/3/2020

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By Plover Intern Parker Kaye

I’m very grateful to have spent the last six months as a part of SFBBO’s Waterbird Team. Prior to joining SFBBO, I had no experience working with birds and am amazed by how much I have learned in what seems like such a short amount of time. The majority of my time has been spent conducting salt pond surveys and learning the waterbirds of the Bay Area, but I have also had the opportunity to develop other skills that will help me as I move forward with my career. I helped generate maps and graphs ...

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An Update on Snowy Plovers

2/7/2020

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By Plover and Tern Program Director Ben Pearl

SFBBO has been intensively monitoring Snowy Plovers in the South Bay since 2003, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and CA Department of Fish and Wildlife acquired large tracts of former salt production ponds and began managing them for wildlife. During that time, the South Bay Snowy Plover population has significantly increased, in large part due to management actions designed specifically to provide them with quality breeding habitat. However, Snowy Plover populations still face many challenges to recovery, especially predation from a diverse group of species, including corvids, gulls, raptors, and mammals. Since 2018, SFBBO has attempted to improve ...

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Thank You to Cargill for Supporting a Great Snowy Plover Season

3/4/2019

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By Plover Program Director Ben Pearl

The 2018 breeding season was an eventful one for Snowy Plovers here in the South San Francisco Bay. SFBBO staff faced cold and drizzly mornings to start the season, swarms of mosquitoes and triple digit temperatures in the middle of the summer, and long days in the field throughout. Our hard work paid off, as we monitored 269 nests in 22 ponds spread throughout the South Bay, with 79% of all nests found at Eden Landing. Pond E14, where we have invested a large amount of time and resources in recent years monitoring the large oyster shell enhancement, ...

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Least Terns Making the Most of New Breeding Site

8/2/2018

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By Plover Program Director Ben Pearl

During the 2018 breeding season, Federally Endangered California Least Terns returned to breed at Eden Landing Ecological Reserve in Hayward for the second year in a row! We were ecstatic for them to return, not only because Least Terns have limited breeding sites across their range, but also because past research, including our own monitoring in 2017, has indicated that Snowy Plovers benefit from nesting in close proximity to Least Terns.

This is due to the aggressive “mobbing” defense that tern colonies employ whenever an avian predator approaches too close to the ...

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WINGBEAT BLOG

CFC Banded Snowy Plover Resighting!

SFBBO Biologists Release Four Juvenile Snowy Plovers

Plover Rescue Kicks Off SFBBO’s 40th Anniversary - "Forty from the Field"

Intern Makes an Impact for Waterbirds and Joins Plover Team

An Update on Snowy Plovers

Thank You to Cargill for Supporting a Great Snowy Plover Season

Least Terns Making the Most of New Breeding Site

Wingbeat

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