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Thanks for tuning in the past couple of months! Things have gotten hectic out at Fowler Beach this year and we had to take an unexpected hiatus from our submission schedule. Hopefully this wild tale will make up for some of our missing issues.
This story begins with one happy couple and one maidenless lad that have made their homes at the southern end of Fowler Beach. Our stars of the south end – Alyssa Edwards and Mom’s Spaghetti – began courting in mid-March like many of our seasoned plovers do.
Near the end of April, an interloper arrived on the scene. Trude is a plucky plover with a big voice – you always know when he’s around because he announces himself with a great fanfare of plover peeps. This is Trude’s first summer as an adult and he’s got a lot to learn. As the days went by and the female plovers on site paired up, poor Trude was left out in the cold. Unpaired male plovers are typically referred to as “bachelors” and he made his bachelor pad right next door to Mom and Alyssa. Not to be deterred, he also picked up a side job as Mom and Alyssa’s pool boy at their waterfront property.
In early May, tragedy struck. Alyssa was found to be missing, and a great horned owl was observed roosting in their backyard later that week. He would never have abandoned his two round children, so we know that something untoward had occurred. Mom’s Spaghetti was bereft, and we thought that perhaps she would be forced to abandon her nest since she wouldn’t be able to incubate them for nearly a month as a single parent.
To our great surprise, Mom remained in the area and even continued tending her nest. Typically, female plovers abandon the territory (or even the site) after losing their mate and seek greener pastures elsewhere.
What was entirely unheard of was how Trude began defending Mom’s two-egg nest. Male piping plovers may occasionally foster another pair’s chicks (we think plovers are bad at math), but they do not take over care of another male’s eggs. We later confirmed that he was tending the nest by installing a game camera nearby. Two weeks after losing Alyssa, Mom shocked us by laying a third egg. That seemed to be the end of it and both she and Trude are now incubating the nest diligently. Trude isn’t just the first plover stepdad that we’ve heard of – he’s the dad who stepped up.
