Creative Commons/Mike Baird

One of the snowy plover's feeding techniques is to run through a cloud of bugs with its beak wide open

Despite the fog, we still think of summer as beach season here in the Bay Area. And that's one thing we have in common with the western snowy plover, a small bird that lays and tends to its eggs on the beach early on in the season.

If you like walking on the beach but need an incentive to get out there on a regular basis, volunteering to watch, walk, and talk for the snowy plover at Ocean Beach or Crissy Field could be right for you. And you can start on July 5, 2010, when volunteers will be cleaning up the beaches to get ready for plover nesting season, says Golden Gate National Recreation Area Park Ranger George Durgerian.

"Volunteers serve as ambassadors for the snowy plover," said Durgerian.

The snowy plover is one of 36 endangered or threatened animal and plant species that call the Golden Gate National Recreation Area home. Around the world, snowy plover populations are declining because humans like the same thing they like: the beach. The plovers are having a difficult time finding undisturbed beaches suitable for breeding and raising their young.

In 1993 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the western snowy plover as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. While snowy plovers overwinter on Ocean Beach and Crissy Field, these beaches are too busy with human activity for the birds to breed successfully here.

Snowy plovers live on the exposed stretch of beach above the high tide line and below the sand dunes, and in urban areas below break walls and roadways, says Audubon Society volunteer Dan Murphy, who monitors the flock on Ocean Beach.

Plovers can fly, but prefer to run along the beach in a distinctive "run-stop-run" pattern as they feed and watch for danger. They pick their food, especially flies, off of the surface of the sand and seaweed.

Dugerian likes to watch one of the plover's more surprising feeding styles—running through a cloud of bugs with its beak wide open.

For about two months in early summer, the birds migrate to quieter beaches in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties as well as to Point Reyes to nest and raise their young.

Snowy plovers lay and tend to their eggs on the open beach. The buff-colored, gray-speckled eggs blend in with the sand. Even on quiet beaches, successful reproduction is not guaranteed. People and animals can unintentionally trample the exposed eggs. Sharp-eyed raptors and scavengers can snatch the eggs and young when the parents are off feeding.

GGNRA Wildlife Ecologist Bill Merkle says the count at Ocean Beach is between 20 and 30 individual snowy plovers each season. Over at Crissy Field, a few plovers showed up at the beach in 2002 after the area's restoration concluded in 2000.

While the counts at Crissy Field are very low, typically one to three birds, their presence represents a remarkable re-introduction of a threatened species in the midst of a busy recreational area.