With the return of wintering Piping Plovers and the push of migrants down the coast, we've been seeing an uptick in banded Piping Plovers. These little birds are arriving from their breeding grounds up north in New England, the Great Lakes, and the northern Great Plains. Some will stop here and spend the winter in North Carolina. Most of these will be Great Plains and Great Lakes birds, while many of those from New England will continue south to the Bahamas.

Every time we see a banded bird, we report the combination and often we are lucky and hear back about what that individual bird has been up to since we last saw it. The first bird we got information about was a Great Lakes bird with yellow and blue color bands. She was hatched in 2008 at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, MI, and she returned there to nest in 2009, 2010, and 2011. She was first seen this summer in early June on North Mantiou Island and nested unsuccessfully on the opposite shore of Lake Michigan at Port Inland near the town of Gulliver.

We have better news about the two Bahamas-banded Piping Plovers that stopped over in southeastern North Carolina this past spring. Researchers and birdwatchers spotted both of them during the 2011 breeding season. The first bird Audubon NC biologists saw last March, which had black and orange bands, turns out to be a male. He bred this summer on Metompkin Island, VA, and fledged one chick.

The second Bahamas Piping Plover that we found last spring was named Bandit by observers at Breezy Point, NY, in the Gateway National Recreation Area. She nested there in 2010 and produced two fledglings. This year she was back in the same place, successfully raising three chicks and not wasting any time getting back south. She was last seen on July 14 on Cape Lookout by researchers from Virginia Tech.

Piping Plover females are typically the first to leave the breeding grounds, leaving the males to finish raising the brood. Next single males depart, and then males with fledglings. By now, though, both plover families could be back in the Bahamas where hopefully they will be sighted again this winter.

-- Lindsay Addison