About This BlogDuring the western snowy plover breeding season, park docents help monitor and protect nesting sites and help create awareness and educate visitors about this threatened species and its life cycle. Visitors have expressed interest in the plovers and are pleased to have staff and docents in the field answering all types of naturalist questions. Through the summer, park staff create updates to let staff, volunteers, and visitors know the latest on what is happening out at the nesting sites. Click on one of the links below to find out how the Snowy Plovers at Point Reyes were doing at the time. To learn more about becoming a Snowy Plover Docent, please visit our Volunteer page. Snowy Plover Update - June 22, 2024
June 21, 2024
Two new nests were found between the Abbotts Lagoon mouth and North Beach parking lot. At this time, we have two active nests on Limantour Spit, one on Kehoe Beach, one in the Abbotts Lagoon Restoration Area, and four on the beach between the Abbotts Lagoon mouth and North Beach parking lot. It was a big week for fledglings! We added 5 more fledges to the season scoreboard, with a total of 14 thus far. This is significantly above average! Snowy Plover Update - June 15, 2024
June 14, 2024
Since our last update two weeks ago, the park's plover team has confirmed a minimum of nine fledglings from the first round of nests! There are likely several more because our team has been having difficulty locating and identifying newly fledged juveniles for broods that we are confident are still alive and active. We only had one fledgling at this point of the nesting season last year and only two in 2022. We still have two and a half months of the nesting season to go! Snowy Plover Update - May 31, 2024
May 31, 2024
There haven't been many notable changes since last week's update—one new nest was found on North Beach (the 12th for this year in this area) and another in the Abbotts Lagoon restoration area (the second for this site). Most of the nests that hatched in the past couple weeks still have broods that are active with at least one chick. Snowy Plover Update - May 24, 2024
May 24, 2024
The snowy plover nesting season in Point Reyes has been a whirlwind! The first nest of the season popped up on April 3 at Limantour Beach and we started detecting nesting at all the usual sites soon after. As of Friday May 24, NPS and Point Blue Conservation Science biologists have found 19 total nests: 4 on Limantour Spit, 1 on Kehoe Beach, 1 in the Abbotts Lagoon restoration area, 11 between Abbotts Lagoon & North Beach, and 2 between North Beach & South Beach parking lots. |
Last updated: May 24, 2024