"Sometimes we get rewarded"...
It takes persistence plus a lucky circumstance to spot a family of tiny
Snowy Plovers, against a backdrop of almost ideal camouflage, as in the
center image. 3 fledglings are quite
rare. In most cases there will be but one survivor, sometimes two... Karma had it
for me to get them all in one shot.
Plover chicks constantly run in all directions to confuse eventual predators.
It was surprising to observe that adult Snowies can get rather aggressive.
A protective parent will not hesitate to
take on much larger birds, like the
Black-bellied Plover who had gotten
to within 2 yards or so of a chick.
For breeding space, even though the
species mostly nest in colonies, often
in proximity of breeding Least Terns,
Snowy Plovers will even fight amongst
themselves. The dive attacker was
trying to drive fellow breeders away
from its own nesting site. They seemed
to have come too close for comfort...