Piping Plover Foraging Ecology on Pikes Beach, Southampton, New York
Elias-Gerken SP and Fraser JD. 1994. Piping Plover Foraging Ecology on Pikes Beach, Southampton, New York. Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
CONCLUSIONS: Filling Little Pike's Inlet produced no discernable, short-term, negative impacts on piping plover breeding biology and foraging ecologyon Pike's Beach based on a comparison of the breeding biology and foraging ecology data gathered in 1993 and 1994. Pike's Beach was a good brood-rearing beach based on 1) the presence and accessibility of bay tidal flats, 2) the aggregation of piping plove nests around the mudflats, 3) foraging rates and 4) arthropod abundances in bay tidal flats and fresh wrack versus the analogous ocean habitats, and 5) broods' selection of bay habitats, especially tidal flats and fresh wrack, over ocean habitats. However, patterns of beach succession and piping plover habitat selection suggest that filling the breach may hasten decline in plover habitat suitability. Breach-filling alters sandspit growth and is likely to speed ecological succession to later barrier island seres not useful to plovers (interior woody vegetation, for example). Moreover, in a natural system, breach closures in one area likely to be balanced with breaches and/or overwashes elsewhere. Anthropogenic breach-filling is rarely, if ever, balanced by allowing breaches and overwashes to persist in nearby areas. This in turn would prevent renewal of the early-successional stage, storm-created habitats to which piping plovers are adapted.