On a Thanksgiving Day trip to Fort Desoto we encountered this sign as we were about to cross the wooden footbridge to North Beach. Of course I wanted to see an actual Piping plover, since I can’t recall ever noticing one before. Not that I’d been looking or anything, but since they are here, I ought to at least try to see them. Didn’t see any Thanksgiving afternoon, so I came back two days later, in the morning.
Sure enough there were several on the North Beach mud flats. They are quite small and got spooked when a much larger Black-bellied plover swooped onto their turf. I found it easy to observe them by sitting down quietly in the mud. They came fairly close. Even so, they are so small that I had to use my digital zoom to get the photo below (cropped), so the photo quality isn’t going to win me any awards, but it works for the web.
