Filipa Costa, Ann Street School
Essex County
Piping Plover
Pirp, Pirp, Pirp!... Hello there, as you may have guessed I'm a bird. I am a Charadrius melodus aka a Piping Plover. If you love the beach as much as I do, you may have seen me before. I'm that little sand colored bird, always running along the water edge. You have seen me, right? Well, if you haven't it is because there are not a lot of us to be seen. I'm an endangered species.
At this time there are only 6,410 of us. The Jersey Shore is one of my favorite spots during spring and summer. It's the perfect place to find a mate, and raise my chicks. You can say I am a shore bird in need of protection. In the last century my feathers were used for decorating women's hats, which led to the loss of our kind. With the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, we were able to recover and grow our number. However, the increased development, shoreline stabilization, loss of habitat, as well as human activity around our nesting sites caused our population to shrink again, reducing us to the current number.
There are things you can do to help us get off the endangered list. Right now, some of our nesting grounds are being fenced off from humans and their pets. However, you can also help by obeying those boundaries and educating the general population. I know that having a fence or a net closing part of one's favorite beach doesn't make anyone happy, but most of the time that is the best way to protect our chicks. So next time you go to the beach and see some piping plover's (yup, that's me), you can look at us as much as you won't but please don't go near our nesting sites.
Filipa Costa
Ann Street School
Newark, NJ
Mrs. Sharon Cardoso