Trouble is brewing for piping plovers, already one of the Great Lakes region's most endangered species, as water levels surge during a rain-soaked spring.
Peering through a spotting scope mounted on a tripod, researcher Alice Van Zoeren notices a piping plover skittering across a sandy, pebble-strewn Lake Michigan beach and hopping into a nest, swapping places with its mate.
Pools are forming behind several nests along this beach at Michigan's Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. And the big lake — gray and slightly rippling on an overcast, breezy morning — has crept within a few yards of the plovers' nesting zone. Many beaches are shrinking or submerged. For tourist-oriented businesses and waterfront homeowners accustomed to wide expanses of sand, that's a worrisome development.
The Great Lakes generally rise with the snowmelt and rainstorms of spring and dip during later dry spells. Those minor fluctuations happen within larger high and low periods that can last years. If so, the piping plovers' situation could become more precarious. Their numbers already have plummeted with shoreline development. The federal government lists them as threatened in the northern Great Plains and along the Atlantic coast, where rising sea levels imperil their wintering grounds. But the Great Lakes population is endangered, hitting a low of just 12 breeding pairs in 1990.
Once settled in, they spend lots of time on the ground — building nests, guarding eggs, darting about in search of food such as insects, spiders and crustaceans. Their plumage, a mixture of light browns and grays with a black collar, provides camouflage.
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