Above photo: A Piping Plover pair on Wells Beach in April. Photo by Coastal Birds Project Technician Kaily Rich
The Coastal Birds Project 2025 season is already in full swing and Piping Plovers are busy foraging along the shoreline, making scrapes in the sand, and starting their nests all up and down the Maine coast. Maine Audubon’s Coastal Birds crew is similarly hard at work, recording newly-arrived plovers, searching for and monitoring nests, and putting up stake and twine fencing, exclosures, and educational signage to protect these tough little birds. To date, we have recorded 122 pairs of plovers and 24 nest attempts on Maine beaches, which is a great sign for a potentially productive breeding season!
Though it might seem surprising, given that coastal Maine experiences snow squalls well into April, Piping Plovers typically begin arriving on our shores sometime around the middle of March. This year, we received news from one of our eagle-eyed volunteers, Bill Donovan, that the first Piping Plover of the season had arrived on Higgins Beach in Scarborough on March 11. Then, on April 18, one of our volunteer coordinators, Suzanne Craig, spotted the first nest of the season on Wells Beach—only ten days after Maine’s last spring snowstorm! Nests have not been recorded in Maine this early since April 18, 2012, which means that this nest sighting is tied for first place for the earliest ever recorded nest!
Why so early? One reason might be because of the warmer spring temperatures Mainers have been experiencing this year, which may have caused the birds to adjust their migration timing. Another reason for early nesting may be because the Wells Beach plovers were incredibly successful last year, with 17 pairs of birds fledging 37 chicks. When Piping Plovers do well on a beach one year, they tend to go full tilt the next year, and Wells Beach is a great nesting area for these birds! We have already recorded 16 pairs of birds at Wells Beach, which means that this breeding season will hopefully also be a good one for our feathered friends.
Since the egg incubation period for Piping Plovers is about 25 days, we will likely start seeing chicks on Wells Beach in just a couple more weeks (yay!). To support these new parents as they incubate their eggs and start hatching chicks, we would like to encourage beachgoers to share the shore with Piping Plovers by keeping their distance from all fenced-in areas and by keeping their animals either on a leash or off the beaches to ensure that plovers don’t get scared off of their nests or otherwise harmed. To learn more about how pets can contribute to Piping Plover conservation efforts, check out our Pets for Plovers program!
The Coastal Birds crew is looking forward to another season of monitoring and protecting Maine’s endangered shorebirds! We are so deeply grateful for the volunteer coordinators, volunteers, and community members who do so much to aid in the protection of these small-but-mighty birds. Stay tuned and follow our Instagram (@mainecoastalbirdsproject) for more updates throughout the season!
