13 year old Piping Plover

Via Vince Cavalieri, one of the brains behind this project!

The Great Lakes piping plover population has its own survivor story like B95 (aka moonbird) the red knot.































This is YOGs, currently our oldest known Great Lakes piping plover. In her 13 years, YOGs has flown something like 39,000 miles in migrations, well more than enough to fly completely around the world! Amongst countless predators, storms, human disturbance and many other hazards, this piping plover has survived and been a big part of the the increase in Great Lakes piping plover numbers.

Ross's Goose seen in OH then MI

From Julie A. Craves of the Rouge River Bird Observatory - a Ross's Goose in Michigan that was also seen in Ohio!

The two links: first with general ID and photos, second with map
New for Dearborn: Ross's Goose
Update on Ross's Goose

This is a fantastic combination of sightings on one bird, kudos to Joe Hildreth for making the connection re: bands!

According to the posts, the bird was banded as a wee nestling in 2006 in Canada, seen in Ohio this March, and made the Michigan appearance in April... not a bad record of a bird on the move!

Canadian plover conundrum

A friend of mine, a Michigan plover biologist, posted a rather interesting saga of a one-legged plover: click here to go to The Birding Life blog.

It is an interesting issue - a plover that hasn't migrated in spite of the lateness of season, an endangered bird that would not survive if left alone, but one that would not be releasable by the time warmer weather rolled around. Thankfully at least it's not unheard of to keep plovers alive in captivity...

Piping Plovers return to Canda

Beach Birds - from On Nature magazine

The Piping Plover is small, specialized and finally returning to its former Canadian range with much help from Michigan efforts... but unless wintering grounds see a decline in similar pressures, the population is still facing precarious challenges.

Oh, yes, and color bands, leg bands and good interviews with biologists are included!

correspondence - MI birds

Greetings.

I have been meaning to pass along our page of recoveries of banded birds from the Rouge River Bird Observatory outside Detroit, MI. This page has a map of recoveries outside of Michigan, and there are a couple links on the sidebar of stories about one of our waterthrushes being recovered, and our recovery of a kinglet from Toronto that your readers might find interesting:

Rouge River Bird Observatory band resightings

Thanks for promoting the reporting of bands!

--

Julie A. Craves
Rouge River Bird Observatory
University of Michigan-Dearborn

http://www.rrbo.org
http://net-results.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/RRBO