How Scientists Are Protecting Plovers’ Beachfront Lifestyle

 Camouflaged by the sand, these threatened shorebirds aim to hide from predators. Now conservationists are trying to give their breeding efforts a boost

The first time Andrea Jones, director of bird conservation at Audubon California, saw western snowy plovers, she nearly didn’t see them at all. Walking along the high tide line of a Central California beach around 2007, she came across what appeared to be a bunch of gray rocks a couple hundred feet off. The “stones” suddenly stood up, exposing feathered white bellies as they scampered away. The ability to vanish in plain sight is this muffin-size, gray-backed shorebird’s primary defense against predators such as hawks and owls. “Sometimes you can’t see them until you’re almost on top of them,” Jones says.

While the species’ coastal population blends in perfectly among the sparsely vegetated dunes and beaches they inhabit along the Pacific Coast, from Washington State to Baja California, their preference for beachfront real estate with few plants has contributed to their undoing. Invasive plants such as European beach grass have destroyed and crowded the birds’ habitat, as has expanding development, which amplifies other natural dangers, too. In particular, ravens, voracious native predators of plover eggs, have exploded in numbers because they can turn urban food waste into a smorgasbord and concrete buildings into cozy nests.