Todd Baker was looking for sea turtle tracks on the southern end of North Chandeleur Island recently when he spotted a pair of small birds on the beach and decided to test out a new camera.
It wasn’t until after he returned to his Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority office in Baton Rouge and blew up the photo that he realized he’d captured an unexpected prize: a fairly rare Wilson’s plover wearing a collection of bands that would eventually identify her as having been born two years earlier on a Mississippi island.
Baker is a CPRA project manager, overseeing engineering and design of the potential rebuilding of the Chandeleur chain of islands, after a nearly 20-year career as a wildlife biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries.
Dots on this map show the locations where a Wilson's plover found on North Chandeleur Island has traveled. It was born on Round Island in Mississippi, wintered at least once in Guatemala, and returned to the Louisiana coast. (Google Earth)
For Abby Darrah, a Mississippi Gulf Coast-based wildlife biologist with the National Audubon Society’s Audubon Delta, it was exciting news: A baby bird she’d banded on Round Island two years ago had grown up and, after at least one winter journey to Nicaragua, and was nesting on the Chandeleur Islands.
The Times-Picayune interviewed Baker and Darrah about the discovery and its significance for the restoration of the Chandeleurs and research on Gulf Coast birds. These conversations have been edited for length and clarity.
Todd Baker created a blow-up of his Wilson's plover photo and was able to make out the multi-colored tracking bands on its legs, which allowed him to find out the bird had been banded soon after birth on Round Island, Miss. (Todd Baker, Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority)
How did you spot the Wilson’s plover?
Baker: We were conducting sea turtle nest surveys. We go out there once a week. As we go through the design process for the restoration of the island, we want to know what kind of nests we’re restoring for, what obstacles we might run into as restoration moves forward. I had a new camera and lens and I saw a pair of them about 250 feet away, and thought, man, what a perfect first subject to test it out.
We saw two birds together and they were very vocal. One fled pretty quickly, and the other one looked around a little bit and was very vocal, clearly demonstrating protective behavior. We never saw a nest, never saw a chick, but the behavior indicated it was nesting.
Biologist Todd Baker measures the width of a track made on a Chandeleur Island beach by a Kemp's ridley sea turtle crawling into or out of the water to lay eggs. Matt Weigel, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, is taking a photo of the measurement. (Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority)
I didn’t even realize it was banded until I got back to the office and was looking at the pictures.
The Wilson’s plover is a small bird, seven inches tall. It’s a solitary nesting bird. They look for sparse vegetation and make a nest, and if any predator approaches, they’ll run away to try to get you to chase them, rather than go for the nest. That nesting strategy is different from the birds that nest in big groups on barrier islands, like pelicans and terns.
This photo shows the baby Wilson's plover that was banded by National Audubon Society wildlife biologist Abby Darrah in June, 2021 (Abby Darrah, Audubon Delta)
Tell me about your banding of this bird, Abby.
Darrah: This was a freshly hatched baby, basically a day old, typical of what we were finding on Round Island in June of 2021. And, yes, we never saw her again. The older chicks are very sneaky, very protective, so we often have no idea what happens to them, which is why it’s really critical to get those bands on them.
The first time it was seen again was by some birders down in Guatemala in January 2022. Information about that sighting got back to us and we were able to identify it as our bird, so it was very exciting to know this chick that we’d never seen again had left her island, made to its wintering grounds in Central America. And now it’s been spotted nesting in Louisiana. That’s a good example of natal dispersal, a bird not returning to where it was born, but instead apparently choosing the Chandeleurs as its breeding location.
Abby Darrah banding a Snowy plover chick. (Abby Darrah, Audubon Delta)
The plovers come up here to breed in March, April, through about July, when they start to leave. In the winter, they can be found anywhere between southern Texas, southern Florida or Central America. So this find was smack in the middle of the breeding season on the Chandeleurs.
How rare is the Wilson’s plover?
Darrah: It’s a species of conservation concern, but it has not reached the level of risk where it’s on a federal list of endangered or threatened species.
Baker: In Louisiana, it's listed as a tier 1 species of greatest conservation need, which means it’s critically imperiled. That means it’s not only a native species, but its population is in decline in Louisiana, because we’re losing its nesting habitat, including barrier islands like the Chandeleurs.
Another rare bird, the Chandeleur gull, is believed to be a hybrid of Kelp and Herring gulls that lives only on the Chandeleur islands. June, 2023. (Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority)
Todd, tell me more about the restoration efforts on the Chandeleur Islands.
Baker: The importance of this island to wildlife and fisheries is just spectacular. There are over 63 species of greatest conservation need found on the Chandeleur Islands, so it’s truly one of, if not the, hot spot in Louisiana for wildlife and fisheries. And it’s important as a barrier island for protection for St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans and the whole east side of the river.
Our goal is two-fold: to restore the barrier island, but with a focus on habitat loss, primarily for birds and sea turtles, but also for sea grasses. The seagrass beds along the island have been shrinking for decades. We want to make sure the island is designed in a way to make it as resilient as possible, to give it as much longevity as possible.
Based on our new surveys, we have the most diverse assemblage of marine seagrass found anywhere along the northern Gulf of Mexico, including turtle grass that is considered the “redwood” species of seagrass.
A Roseate spoonbill, foreground, shares space with a Brown pelican on New Harbor Island, adjacent to Chandeleur Island and part of the island restoration project, in June 2023. (Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority)
Is money an issue?
Baker: We have $8 million to pay for the engineering and design work, provided by Gulf-wide federal and state trustees as part of the BP natural resource damage assessment, but no funds have been promised yet for actual restoration. That might come from the separate, larger Louisiana BP trustees funds set aside for natural resource damage or from other sources.
Aerial view of the southern end of North Chandeleur Island, where CPRA project manager Todd Baker photographed a rare Wilson's plover. (Google Earth)
How important is restoration of the Chandeleur Islands?
Baker: There’s just not much better place in Louisiana to see the uniqueness and beauty of the state as a wilderness area. You don’t see a lot of trash, you don’t see camps, you don’t see anything related to populous areas.
Black skimmers, flying near the Chandeleur Islands, in June 2023. (Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority)
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