Snowy Plover Project- Update

As of June 10, there have been a total of 15 Snowy Plover nests on Sanibel. Five nests are currently incubating and five nests have fledged, with a total of 11 chicks. Four nests were predated (one of them also was washed out); one nest was not viable.

This year, SCCF is also monitoring Wilson's Plovers: there have been two nests: one hatched with 3 chicks and one nest fledged three chicks.
During the 2010 nesting season we had seven fledglings survive from a total of 15 nests. Of the 15 nests laid, 9 hatched, 4 were abandoned, 3 were predated, and 1 was recorded as washed out but still hatched. This gave us a hatch rate of 60% for the 2010 season. The 9 nests that hatched yielded 23 chicks, of the 23 chicks, 7 fledged giving us a fledge rate of 30.4% for the 2010 season. Compared to earlier years the actual numbers of fledged chicks is just below average, however the percentage of birds fledged is on par with percentages in previous years.
It is extremely important that people do not disturb nesting birds nor let dogs run on the beach. As an example of how vulnerable the snowy chicks are, there have been 15 hatched nests this season, but there are only seven fledglings. Nest 11 hatched three chicks on the evening of June 15; by Friday morning, only one chick remained. The last week in May, Nest #10 was abandoned with two eggs. The three chicks from Nest #1 were lost the weekend of April 24-25, possibly from the severe thunderstorm on Monday morning. Another nest was washed over and lost one egg that same weekend. On April 30, we found that Next #2 was lost, possibly due to predation.