A pair of federally endangered piping plovers has returned to Gull Point in Presque Isle State Park, a peninsula in Lake Erie at Erie and has begun courting.

It's the second consecutive year that the pair - identified by their leg bands - has come to the same beach for the nesting season. Last year, they hatched three chicks and raised two, the first new piping plovers that Pennsylvania has produced since the late 1950s.

Their nest was one of two piping plover nests on that beach in 2017. A quartet of eggs were rescued from the other the nest when strong waves threatened to destroy it. A pair of chicks were hatched, raised at a captive-rearing facility at the University of Michigan Biological Station and released in late August along Lake Superior.

According to Mary Birdsong, shorebird monitor for the Erie Bird Observatory, this year the banded male was first seen at Gull Point on April 21 and the female was spotted on May 3.

"That both birds are back from the nest that reared two chicks last year is great news," said Cathy Haffner, a Pennsylvania Game Commission biologist who has been involved in Great Lakes piping plover recovery efforts since 2001. "We'll keep our fingers crossed that the pair from the failed nest also returns.

"There's always some chance piping plovers won't return. Survival is never guaranteed to a bird that weighs less than a deck of cards and migrates every spring and fall.

"Last year's nest failure also could compel the other plovers to nest elsewhere."

With a total population of just over 4,000 piping plovers, the species is one of the rarest birds in the Great Lakes region, where it is considered endangered. It also occurs along the Atlantic Coast and in the northern Great Plains, where it is protected as threatened.

After a male piping plover was observed at Gull Point in 2005, the Game Commission joined the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which manages Presque Isle State Park, to develop a Presque Isle Piping Plover and Common Tern Partnership to bring both beleaguered species back to Pennsylvania. Other partners include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Army Corps of Engineers, Audubon Pennsylvania, Erie Bird Observatory and Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.

In a subsequent, 2007 piping plover recovery assessment, Haffner recommended woody and invasive vegetation removal along the Gull Point Natural Area shoreline to improve recolonization potential, among other strategies.

A USFWS Great Lakes Restoration Initiative grant, administered by the Game Commission, enabled the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and state park staff to start an annual vegetation-control program on 33 acres of the Gull Point Natural Area in 2011.

Never abundant, but still somewhat common within suitable breeding habitat on Great Lakes shorelines in the early 1900s, the Great Lakes piping plover population bottomed out in the late 1980s, when only 17 breeding pairs - confined to Michigan's shoreline - were recorded.

At one time, Pennsylvania likely hosted as many as 15 pairs at Presque Isle, which offers the only suitable breeding habitat in the state.

But steep declines in piping plover populations through the 1940s and '50s - accompanied by increasing interference from development and human traffic on beaches and predation - endangered the Great Lakes population.

Piping plovers are highly vulnerable to disturbance during all phases of the nesting season. They could leave the area or abandon a nest or chicks. Disturbance or harassment carries federal and state penalties.

To ensure the plovers remain undisturbed, they are protected by a restricted area designated by signage and fences.

In addition, the Gull Point Natural Area is closed to human traffic from April 1-Nov. 30 and boats cannot moor within 100 feet of the Point.

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