Spring?

Hi!

I just returned from the very barren beach!

The wind is from the north at 20+mph and the temp is hovering in the mid forties! I've seen many Januaries that were as warm or warmer...

The poor shorebirds are shivering..and only three piping plover nests so far, possibly due to the chill, but more likely the result of overzealous "beach grooming" daily. And maybe only two oystercatcher nests? That is sad to me, usually I have four families right on my own beach/ dunes...many more scattered along the couple miles of beach.

I remember some years as many as 16 plover cages, the protective fencing that is put up to stop predators from attacking the nests, stealing their eggs.

The two nesting plover pairs I showed you a month ago making their try-out nests have disappeared, moved on...again, the big earthmovers destroyed their nests! (I would like to see the grooming and raking curtailed, not stopped entirely; and it should/ could be confined to daily light cleaning along the tidelines of beaches used by humans. Even I don't want to sit in piles of trash, bitten by black flies! But look at that beach above. Does it look to you like it needs heavy-duty plowing/raking!? No!))
In the following pix you can see the deep treadmarks of the heavy trucks, right down into the waterline, where the birds feed!

Beach grooming is a bugaboo of mine, so I won't go into details. You can google the term or read about it here. On my beach, huge rakes plow acres of pristine sand, destroying birds habitats. My beach rarely has large seaweed deposits and if/when that is cleaned below the tide line by the daily raking. All raking removes the food sources which live in the wrack, or natural junk, thrown up by the sea....

On a positive note, a golfing friend sent this photo to me today, with the caption "Just Born, Their First Time on the Course!"

Note how teeny tiny the chicks are and how proudly vigilant the parents are, taking them on their first walk...yes, across our local golf course. I was thrilled. My friend knew I would be, even though as a golfer he's not so fond of geese. But Yay! Here is one goose family that beat the cruel conservation geese killers, yay and hooray!

love

       lizzy

gone to the beach....

Canadian geese photos by MH. Thx, M!