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Piping plovers, which hide along coastal areas aided by their camouflaged sandy-colored backs, are difficult to spot until their little orange legs scuttle across the beach.
“They’re just tiny little marshmallows on legs running around the beach, and it’s the cutest thing ever invented,” said Kat Christie, a coastal waterbird biologist for Delaware’s Division of Fish and Wildlife.
The presence of these small, round shorebirds, notable for their white chests and black collars, indicates a healthy beach ecosystem. But piping plovers, which nest in the sand, are threatened by human activity, storms and predators.
In Delaware, conservation efforts are proving successful as the number of breeding pairs held steady during an annual count of the birds this year. However, issues such as predation and extreme weather meant fewer of their chicks were able to grow into flying age this year.
The birds arrive and nest on Delaware’s beaches in March, and typically migrate south by September.
Piping plovers have been listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act since 1986, and are considered endangered in Delaware, because of development and increased public use of the beaches these shorebirds nest on. They also face the threat of newly introduced predators such as red foxes, which are attracted to areas with more people.
“Plovers just don’t tend to do well on highly disturbed beaches, both because of the sensitivity of those nests where they can so easily be destroyed, and the birds, they’re territorial — where one plover pair sets up a nest, no other plover pairs are allowed to set up right next door or they’ll be fighting constantly,” Christie said.