Welcome to Golden Plover Central!!
...your little window on the world of Pluvialis field research

R. Kienholz with a banded pair of P. dominica (Alaska 1987).  This is a unique experience: note his smile!

The golden plovers are classified as shorebirds...but don't look for these guys on the beach!  Their preferred winter habitat is short grass...like lawns.  In Hawaii the Pacific golden plover (P. fulva) spends its days hunting for assorted creepy crawlers like insects, centipedes, and worms.  It rigorously defends its little hunting ground from other plovers: neighbors mostly respect each other's boundaries.  The Punchbowl Cemetery in Honolulu, Hawaii has been a key study site, and several military bases on Oahu have also been surveyed.  One female that was banded as an adult returned to the same spot on Bellows AFB for 19 years!

Processing birds at a picnic area on Bellows Air Force Base on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii.

Mist nets are used to catch golden plovers on Oahu.  The birds are carefully extracted from the nets and placed in cloth bags to await processing.  That entails weighing and measuring, applying unique leg band combinations and/or attaching radio transmitters.  Plovers put on plenty of fat in late spring.  That's their fuel supply for a non-stop flight across the Pacific Ocean to the coast of Alaska every April.   Work with radio transmitters has shown that they make the 2,200 mile trip in less than 48 hours.      Links to video clips from April 2002: removing a bird from the net  attaching a transmitter  releasing a female plover  releasing a male plover

The study area in Alaska is near the Feather River, north of Nome.  The male plover returns to the same area where he raised a family the previous summer, and courts a female to be his mate.  (It may or may not be his mate from the previous year.)  She lays four eggs in a shallow nest cup amidst the lichens, mosses and stunted plants on the tundra.

Ron Kienholz (left) looks on as project leader Dr. O. W. Johnson weighs an egg.

Despite the fact that there's sunlight all of the time in June, the birds don't seem to have any problem knowing what time of day it is.  The male generally sits on the eggs during the day, and the female gets the night shift.  The time when they switch is called changeover.  We witnessed it once...around 9 PM.

Female Pacific golden plover on the nest.  Her drooping wings cover her hatching chicks.

Both the speckled eggs and the chicks are well camouflaged!   The adjacent photo of a black-bellied plover nest contains one egg and three black and gold chicks.  One chick is so young that it is still wet. Three plover species nest in our study area: black-bellied plovers, and American and Pacific golden plovers.

This is a black-bellied plover nest that is hatching out.  Can you find the egg and the black and gold chicks?

Parents take turns sitting on the eggs and defending their family.  A broken-wing display is used to lure predators (and researchers) away from the nest.

Some birds mount a more vigorous defense.  Aleen got her scalp bloodied when she went too close to an Arctic tern nest near the white rock.

There's virtually no way to live trap an adult plover on the tundra once the family has left the nest, so it has to be done while the parents are still taking turns incubating the eggs.  The trap shown in the photos was designed by Russian field researchers.  Painted wooden eggs temporarily replace the real ones, and the trap is set over the nest.  The trap consists of a metal framework with netting attached.  Meanwhile, the parent is frantically trying to distract us away from the nest, and is anxious to get back to its eggs.  When the bird returns to the nest, it disturbs monofilament line which connects to the trigger set: the net snaps over the bird.  

Setting the trap over wooden, decoy eggs

Carefully taking a bird out of the trap

       Once in hand, the bird is fitted with a set of colorful, plastic leg bands in a unique combination that distinguishes it from all other banded plovers in the study area.  It may also have a tiny radio transmitter glued onto the feathers on its back.  Then, for as long as the batteries last, the plover can be located in the area by using a radio receiver. 

Pacific golden plover male with newly hatched chicks

Plover chicks don't require extended care or mouth to mouth feeding from their parents like baby robins.  They dry off and gain strength soon after hatching and begin to wander around looking for their own food.  Their parents act as guardians and keep them warm.  If they survive the summer, they too will fly to a warmer climate for the winter.

But since the parent birds all leave the breeding area before the young ones, how do the kids know where to go or how to get there?   Nobody knows.  We still have a lot to learn!

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Updated by Aleen Kienholz on 8 June 02