For the longest time the whereabouts of wintering piping plovers was a mystery. Winter surveys have consistently only turned up about half of the known breeding population, but this is changing. New information from The Bahamas is shedding light on this long standing mystery and providing valuable information on the wintering areas of this threatened shorebird.

Audubon’s Matt Jeffery and Walker Golder just completed a weeklong search for shorebirds on Andros and the Joulter Cays, The Bahamas, where they documented 450 piping plovers, approximately 5% of the world’s population. The greatest new discovery was in the Joulter Cays where they counted 314 piping plovers.  They also found new winter sites for red knots, large numbers of reddish egrets, including a new nesting site, and large winter flocks of short-billed dowitchers, black-bellied plovers, and other shorebirds.

Piping Plovers spend over half of their annual cycle away from their breeding sites. The habitats they depend on during migration and winter are just as important as breeding habitats and adult survival away from the breeding grounds is essential to the stability and recovery of the Piping Plover population.

“Understanding where piping plovers winter and the habitats this species depends on is essential to recovering and protecting this threatened shorebird,” said Walker Golder, deputy director of Audubon NC. "We’ve made huge strides during this trip.”  Next week the team will survey the Berry Islands.

In 2011, an international team of shorebird biologists, including Golder, traveled to The Bahamas in search of wintering Piping Plovers and found more than 1,000 birds.

Read an earlier blog post about Audubon's research in The Bahamas.