Piping Plovers are small, endangered shorebirds in Manitoba. Its call is described as a "plaintive peep-lo" which made it the perfect name for this blog as it too is a plaintive call, a Call to Action.
The three channel chicks took their maiden flights on Friday, July 23. They continued to practise their new found freedom for the rest of the day. Later in the evening, I witnessed an amazing scene not once, but twice and recorded it in my notes this way; "Dad left the fenced enclosure and gradually made his way to the slight rise of beach-ridge in front of the water. One by one the chicks slipped between the slats of the snowfence and with a running start got airborne and flew to papa." As if to reward his charges, dad let the young ones feed for about 20 minutes before taking them back to the enclosure to do the test flights all over again.
With the channel chicks fledged, that brought our total to seven at Grand Beach this year. That is up two from last year, but down one over-all. Last year five chicks fledged at Grand Beach from two nests while a nest across the lake at Gimli fledged three birds for a total of eight.
The question now, is, how will they fair on their flight south to their wintering grounds along the Gulf of Mexico and how will the oil spill effect them? We won't find out the answer to that question until their return nine months from now in May 2011. We're keeping our fingers crossed.
KP
