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Banding is a critically important tool scientists use in bird conservation. Through banding programs (like those run by the U.S. Geological Survey Bird Banding Laboratory) biologists gain valuable insights into birds’ natural histories, including population size, age structure, migration routes, and movement patterns. With many banding programs throughout the country, one of the best-known focuses on Piping Plover conservation. Scientists monitor the birds through three separate banding programs based on their breeding locations. 

Piping Plover Background

Atlantic population:  With a breeding range stretching along the east coast from North Carolina all the way up into Maine, this population has the most breeding pairs of Piping Plover. Some pairs travel as far as Canada to breed and raise their families in Quebec and Newfoundland.

Great Plains population:  Occurring from Nebraska up through North and South Dakota and into the Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, this is the second largest population of Piping Plovers and mostly follows along the path of the Missouri River and its tributaries.

Great Lakes population: This is the most endangered population of Piping Plovers, with scattered breeding pairs throughout Michigan, although recently some pairs have spread to other states.

Regardless of their breeding location, all Piping Plovers in the country migrate south and spend the winter along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from the Carolinas through Texas, as well as in the Caribbean. Each winter, Piping Plovers from all three populations congregate along their preferred beaches.

Until the 1990s, when coordinated banding efforts began, scientists did not know where the birds wintering on Florida’s beaches bred.

How Does Bird Banding Work?

Ornithologists and other scientists studying birds typically capture them as chicks and apply a combination of bands and flags on one or both legs that is specific to the individual in that study. Piping Plovers get a colored band or flag at the top of one of their legs, and the color of this band or flag is specific to their breeding location.

Realizing a Personal Connection

Where I work in the eastern Florida Panhandle, we see the Great Lakes Piping Plovers with their orange bands fairly often, but it is very rare to see a banded bird from one of the other populations. While surveying at Flag Island Critical Wildlife Area in early January, I saw a Piping Plover with a yellow flag, indicating it was a member of the Great Plains population. I immediately got out my camera and took photos to document its presence here in Florida and to help me read the code on its flag more easily. Through my photographs, I determined that the code on the flag read 62Z.

After reporting the banded bird online with the Banded Bird Laboratory, I eagerly awaited a reply with details about the bird's origins. Turns out, the bird was banded as a chick on Lake Sakakawea in North Dakota in July of 2016. Two things stood out to me: One, the bird was at least nine years old. Considering that the average life span of Piping Plovers is 5-7 years, this was an old bird.

Even more remarkable was that it hatched on Lake Sakakawea, an area where I monitored Piping Plovers during the summer of 2022. I eventually learned that this particular bird hatched on a group of islands just west of the Lake Ä¢¹½Av Causeway, which separates Lake Ä¢¹½Av from Lake Sakakawea.