PELLSTON — The University of Michigan Biological Station in the Great Lakes region is home to the world’s only Piping Plover Captive Rearing Center.
Managed by the Detroit Zoological Society (Detroit Zoo) in collaboration with the University of Minnesota and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the facility along Douglas Lake in northern Michigan is staffed every spring and summer by avian specialists stationed at UMBS to incubate and hatch out abandoned Great Lakes piping plover eggs and care for chicks to save the federally endangered species from extinction.
“Raising young birds is a lot of work and there has been success,” said Dr. Francie Cuthbert, a professor with the University of Minnesota who started the intensive plover recovery, captive rearing and re-release program more than 30 years ago at the field station in Pellston.
“The whole recovery effort really was dependent on being able to work out of the University of Michigan Biological Station. It’s ideal because it’s situated right at the tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, which has been the heart of where plovers were nesting for a number of years. Now the birds are nesting much more dispersed.”
Growing Numbers
The shores of the Great Lakes were once home to nearly 800 pairs of piping plovers. In 1990 that number had dropped to between 12 and 17, only in the state of Michigan on two of the Great Lakes.
In 2023 scientists counted 80 unique adult pairs of piping plovers on all five of the lakes. In the past several years, plovers have nested in every Great Lakes state except Indiana and Minnesota. Plovers also are nesting in the Canadian province of Ontario.
Last year’s total was the most since the birds were listed as endangered in 1985. That’s more than halfway to the recovery goal of 150 nesting pairs in the U.S.
“The population is expanding,” Cuthbert said. “It’s exciting we’ve had a big jump in numbers. That’s over a long time period, but a recovering population is very slow. There are lots of threats and reasons that keep the population from exponentially growing.”
Welcoming Shorebirds
As spring begins in 2024, the endangered shorebirds are once again making their annual migration north from their southern wintering grounds for the upcoming breeding season.
Cuthbert said 25 to 30% of the piping plovers that are raised in captivity at UMBS and released into the wild survive to return to the Great Lakes to mate after spending the winter along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in the southern regions of the U.S. — “which is slightly less than wild birds.”
Meanwhile, scientists from zoos and agencies across the U.S. are getting ready to converge on the research and teaching campus about 20 miles south of the Mackinac Bridge to care for piping plover eggs rescued from Great Lakes beaches.
Last year was a record year for another reason: 44 chicks hatched at UMBS in 2023, with 39 of those successfully released into the wild.
In 2022, they raised 10.
In 2020, researchers at UMBS released 39 to the wild. That year during the global pandemic the Detroit Zoo was responsible for incubating, hatching and rearing the chicks until they were ten days old at the zoo’s campus, then they were transferred to UMBS for rearing and preparation to be released.
“Watching the chicks grow feels like watching a Disney movie,” said Ania Goins, a keeper in the Detroit Zoo’s Bird Department who was stationed at UMBS in 2023. “They’re adorable. I’m happy they are thriving. Hopefully they will come back to the Great Lakes to start their little families.”
Protecting Nests
Piping plovers make shallow nests on flat, open, sandy beaches — the same beaches that attract people, their pets and development.
From 8 to 28% of nests are abandoned each season, most often following the death of a parent plover who was taken by a predator or when high water washes out a nest. Predators include coyotes, skunks, gulls, crows and birds of prey.
The massive effort to save tiny birds involves coordinating dozens of scientists and volunteers across six states, two tribes and multiple government agencies, who all help monitor and track piping plovers.
Goins says monitors in the field report that merlins — small, fierce falcons — are becoming more of a problem.
“They’re snatching a parent, and the eggs are abandoned,” Goins said.
Field monitors observe nesting. When something happens to one parent, the other parent can’t rear chicks on their own and leaves the nest.
“We collect those eggs under special federal permits, bring them to the station, incubate them, make sure the chicks hatch and care for them until independence,” Goins said.
Raising Birds
Zookeepers from across the U.S. work in two-week rotations at the U-M Biological Station to provide artificial incubation and raise chicks in a lakeside building and protected pens along the Douglas Lake shoreline until the birds are able to fly and ready to be set free in the wild and released along the Great Lakes.
It’s a rewarding, exciting experience for people dedicated to conservation and recovery of this rare species.
“Any time we can do any sort of fieldwork and can help out an endangered species, that is really, really important,” said Cody Sowers, one of the head keepers of the Bird Department at the Cincinnati Zoo who was stationed at UMBS in 2023. “As zookeepers, we talk a lot about conservation and we talk a lot about fieldwork, but actually getting out and doing those projects in the field like this, that is what everything’s about.”
The Detroit Zoo has managed the rearing center’s operation for 23 years, enhancing and growing what Cuthbert and graduate students built from scratch.
The Detroit Zoo, because of its expertise in bird care and incubation, has developed protocols to incubate abandoned eggs and then care for the chicks that hatch, until they are ready to be released back into the wild.
The rescued eggs start in an incubator.
A piping plover weighs between six and seven grams when it hatches and achieves the ability to fly when they’re 25-35 days old. It’s released when caretakers know the bird can fly well and weighs more than 40 grams, less than a tennis ball.
In the first days of life, feather dusters are placed in pens of newly hatched piping plovers to serve as fluffy replications of plover parents, offering a comforting place to brood. Heat, food and water are provided as the sound of gentle waves flowing to and from are played from a CD in the background, said Bonnie Van Dam, curator of birds with the Detroit Zoological Society.
Scientists weigh the birds every day and provide a diet that includes crickets, mealworms, blackworms, mayflies (when they’re hatching), smelt and little shrimp called krill.
“These groups get feedings multiple times a day,” Sowers said. “We’re weighing everybody, recording weights, recording their percentage weight gains or losses and then determining how much that we feed.”
The field station facilities feature a flight pen outside the plover building and training grounds along the beach with a pen surrounded by netting to allow the growing plovers a safe space to stretch their wings — when they’re ready — and dip their toes in lake water. They also forage for fly larvae and little insects on the shore, as well as get exposed to the elements like wind and rain.
“We want to make sure they have strong flight so they can escape if there is danger or start practicing migrating south,” Goins said.
“The Douglas Lake shoreline mimics the Great Lakes shoreline,” Cuthbert said. “The key is to keep them wild, make them wild and not release them back to the wild with a strong captive protective influence. We want them out in rain. We want them out when the temps have dropped. We want them exposed to wind, and even better, if there’s some lightning and some good storms. We want them to see the night sky and know what the real world is all about.”
Tracking Travels
Before they’re released back to their natural habitat, each chick’s legs are outfitted with a unique combination of color bands so they can be tracked.
Stephanie Schubel is the lead plover bander and field team coordinator for the Great Lakes population recovery effort. She is one of four University of Minnesota researchers stationed at UMBS along Douglas Lake.
Schubel was a student at UMBS in 1999 and returned to the field station in 2002 as a teaching assistant for the Biology of Birds course for six years. She served as a plover monitor at nearby Wilderness State Park for a few years before joining the banding team in 2008 and has led many aspects of the plover mission for 17 years.
On July 11, 2023, she proudly held Woody, a plover hatched at UMBS from an egg recovered from Canada, swabbing the bird to collect DNA and putting colorful bands on its legs to show it’s a captive-reared plover with a unique identity.
All banding, marking and sampling is being conducted under a federally authorized Bird Banding Permit issued by the U.S. Geological Survey.
“This is only the second time we’ve obtained eggs from Canada because there’s a lot of permitting involved,” Schubel said. “But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service worked with Ontario and got the permits in place.”
Most years the majority of eggs come from Michigan nests and a few from Wisconsin, but 2023 marked the first time the facility at the U-M Biological Station welcomed eggs from New York along Lake Ontario. Zookeepers also incubated eggs collected from a Lake Erie beach in Pennsylvania.
“It was an extraordinary year,” Schubel said. “The population is expanding and spreading out, so we’re trying to rescue as many eggs as we can because every bird counts.”
The unique banding combination on the bird legs is critical for identifying individuals on the breeding grounds and also for volunteers and birders who follow the plovers’ travels down to the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and the Gulf states.
“It’s really important when we learn of those wintering sites that we make sure there’s some sort of protection going on,” Schubel said. “Because plovers spend nine months of the year there, and then they’re here only about three months.”
Making the bands easy to read also helps inspire the public to care.
“It’s easier for people to connect with the birds when we know who they are,” Schubel said. “A lot of times at sites, volunteers and people monitoring the newly released plovers name those birds and then they make a real connection with them and it’s great for PR and educating people and getting people engaged and interested in our project.”
Over the years, piping plovers have become celebrities in the cities where they have nested along a Great Lake, from Chicago to Toledo.
Setting Free
On July 19, 2023, Schubel drove out to Wilderness State Park along Lake Michigan with several UMBS field technicians to release four captive-reared piping plovers on a remote section of beach marked with a sign designating it as a Piping Plover Nesting Area: “Pets NOT allowed beyond this point.”
Opening the door to the travel carrier, Schubel said, “Alright, little buddies. Good luck!”
As the group watched the endangered birds take their first steps in their natural habitat and fly in spurts over the water, the moment was filled with joy and a bit of nerves, like parents watching their children explore independence.
“It’s always great to see them be able to spread their wings and fly — to see them really take flight, not inhibited by the training enclosures at the field station,” Schubel said. “It fills your heart and gives you hope. Working with endangered species can sometimes be difficult. It really is a great feeling to know that hopefully they’re going to have a good year and survive and come back and add more little plovers to our Great Lakes beaches. That seems like a real success to me.”
After the record year, piping plover researchers are optimistic about the future of both the species and the Great Lakes ecosystems.
“I think they’re a very beautiful bird. The young are irresistible — so cute. But it’s really the Great Lakes shoreline that I find to be so spectacular and unusual globally,” Cuthbert said. “We need to protect it. The plovers are essentially a symbol of the Great Lakes shoreline and where you find them you find other rare species. As long as they’re being protected, the sites where they nest are also protected.”
Celebrating Success
In honor of Cuthbert’s conservation work, Frontier Airlines named a plane after her: an airbus, “Francie the Piping Plover.”
Griffin Claw Brewing Company also created the Piping Plover Pilsner, a beer to benefit the Detroit Zoological Society’s conservation work.
In 2009, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) awarded the Detroit Zoo with a Significant Achievement Award for North American Conservation.
“We are grateful to the University of Michigan Biological Station, which has provided space and facilities for captive rearing, a supportive and enthusiastic environment for researchers, and long-term data storage,” Cuthbert said. “Thank you to everyone in this team effort. Together, we’re making progress.”
Follow the Great Lakes Piping Plover Recovery Effort at greatlakespipingplover.org and facebook.com/GLPIPL and Instagram/GLPIPL.
Watch the inspiring video or scroll down to view a comprehensive gallery of photos.
