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Stuart Carlton 0:00
teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. John, welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes a twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice as people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton, I work with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. And I'm joined today by absolutely nobody. That's right. What a sad day due to Hurricane related stuff. I've had trouble getting everything scheduled. Lots of things are happening at the last minute. And so it's just me and our guest today an intimate conversation one on one. And for those who did reach out, incidentally, everything is fine with my family in the hurricane, they are without power. It will be cool when they get power. Literally. I would not like to be stuck in New Orleans in a house with no power, but it's a choice you make. So thank you to those of you who did ask. I appreciate that. Let's see a couple of announcements for guitar interview number one don't forget about the lake ease. Right we've had a number of leaky nominations. This is our end of Year award show that we are calling quite possibly not the least prestigious, Great Lakes related award ceremony podcast. And we want you to nominate things we have all sorts of you know science communication of the year, science research of the year, Great Lakes related of course, and you know, sandwich of the year don't have the year, the most important stuff all the most important categories we have. So please go to bitly.com/leakey 21 to nominate things for the lake ease and I'll put a link in the show notes to that. And with that, normally, I would feature a leaky nominated item right now, but we're just gonna go quick and dirty today because there's a lot happening. So I encourage you to do a nomination instead. And let's go straight to our guest. Here we go.

Our guest today is Jillian Farkas she is the Great Lakes piping plover coordinator. Oh yes. And official wildlife biologists at the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Jillian. How are you today?

Jillian Farkas 2:04
I do pretty good. Thanks for having me.

Stuart Carlton 2:06
Oh, thank you so much for coming on. So we're here today to talk about piping clovers. And so let's start with the basics. For those like me, who don't really know anything about them. I'm not much of a birder. So what is a piping plover? How would you like describe a piping plover to those out there who are listening in the theater of the mind?

Jillian Farkas 2:24
Yeah, so finding Clover is a small shorebird. That typically is it's smaller than a Robin, but it's bigger than a chickity. It's definitely smaller than one would expect for shorebird. There are kind of sand colored to blend in with their environment. And during the breeding season, which we see in the Great Lakes, they all have a dark band between their eyes and then kind of have a pronounced orange beat and orange kind of tinted legs as well as a band around their neck. And so a lot of folks sometimes get confused with killdeer, which kind of exist everywhere a lot in urban environments, but they're still they're kind of in the same genus. And so they're similar. They're both clovers and the plover family. But kildaire tend to have a couple more stripes. They're a little bit louder had have a bigger, bigger I heard of piping clovers, but if you're on the Great Lakes, you will probably see both so

Stuart Carlton 3:20
probably see both. So I'm looking at a picture of these now, and they're cute little birds.

Jillian Farkas 3:27
They're very cute, especially in person, especially when the chicks are hatched and running around the beach. Everyone says that they're little cotton balls with toothpick legs, and you can't really go wrong. So as soon as you see them, your your heart kind of melts and they're adorable. So if you're able to go and see him, I highly recommend it.

Stuart Carlton 3:45
Yeah. Okay. And so what, actually so people do want to see him so they spend the summer here before going south. Is that right? Correct. this all got started. Incidentally, I read an article about some Chicago. clovers in the Chicago Tribune, which we'll talk a little bit more about later. But so this was like one sign that the summer is ending, you know, the kids are back in school. It's quieter home, which is nice. But the sad part is no more piping clovers. Right? So when they migrate, I'm curious about migrating birds. I don't know a lot about the like, do they go to the same place or kind of the general same region? How does that work?

Jillian Farkas 4:16
So our Great Lakes birds, for the most part will go down to the Gulf of Mexico or the Carolinas. But occasionally we have a bird or two that will go down to the Bahamas or Cuba or even the Yucatan Peninsula and Mexico. We only have 75 pairs in the Great Lakes. So we don't have a whole lot of Great Lakes birds. But what's exciting is that there's there's a couple of different distinct populations. And so there's a great plains population. We have the Great Lakes population, which is the smallest and only one listed as endangered. And then there's a Atlantic Coast population. And so the Atlantic Coast population in the Great Lakes population will kind of overwinter and similar areas but we can tell them apart because Great Lakes first for the most part, all of them are banded and they have a unique band and orange flag that indicates that it's a great lakes Clover compared to an Atlantic Coast clover in Atlantic Coast clover. And so we're able to get those reports from birders and different partners and collaborators from where we're seeing them. And so we've seen them at an island in South Carolina big stopover point or big wintering site for us is Cumberland Island and Georgia. We have a lot of piping plovers that go there. We have Tybee Island and Georgia Outback key in Florida, Dolphin Island and Alabama. Monty who is one of the Chicago clovers is in Galveston and Texas and his mate is in Florida. That's why it's always a great United story when they come back to Chicago they were overwintering in different locations but they're able to reunite back in Chicago so it's always fun to be able to track them and see where they end up.

Stuart Carlton 5:47
These are all my old stomping grounds I got my masters at the University of Georgia and my PhD at the University of Florida and I've been to dolphin island you know all this so it's fun to hear that Oh, you

Jillian Farkas 5:56
didn't see piping overs or near there What were you doing school? Come

Stuart Carlton 5:59
on, you know, I might have seen them. The thing is a piping plover can land on me and say hello, I'm not piping plover. And I would not know at least until it till today. But so so I don't get that. So. So they overwinter kind of desperately, but then they come back to the same place is that? I guess that makes sense if they overwinter if each individual bird over winter is at the same place, and he comes back to Chicago, or wherever kind of the same place is, is that how it works. So they'll have basically one place on the coast or on the south and one place up here on the Great Lakes.

Jillian Farkas 6:29
So Frankie might be able to speak a little bit more to this. But typically, they'll come back to the same breeding site, but it's not a guarantee, I would say maybe 85 90% of the time, they'll come back to the same to the same spot, especially if they have success. But if they don't have success the previous year, then they might start exploring a different area. So there's no guarantee that they're going to go back down to the same wintering area. I think it's just if they're they have a good a good time there. The food's right. They can also jump around from site to site. I think moths are one of our birds, I think is currently in Georgia. But I think that he might head over to the Yucatan. So typically, we can just see it bounce around. But Bill, we it's really great. I always get nervous when some of our keyboards like Mantine rose, if they don't come back to the spot. So I always keep my fingers crossed and hope in late or April or early May that we see him come back. But

Stuart Carlton 7:24
so you mentioned that these are endangered. That's actually sounds kind of challenging, right? Because the Great Lakes population is in danger. But the other isn't the Atlantic population. But the Great Lakes may disperse over to the Atlantic. Is that kind of so they're listed under the Endangered Species Act, I assume. And so is that kind of a mess for like, regulators or policymakers, whoever on the coastal states trying to or developers, frankly, you know, is that kind of a headache to deal with the two different populations in one geographic region.

Jillian Farkas 7:52
So when they're in the wintering grounds, it's kind of an odd predicament where the endangered Great Lakes piping plovers just kind of get classified as threatened. So they lose their endangered status in the winter, but they get it back in the summer up in the Great Lakes. So it really doesn't make it's a unique case for sure. But typically, in the breeding season, we're not having overlap between the Atlantic coast or the Great Plains. And so it doesn't cause too many headaches, I think up in in the breeding range. We do have a few instances throughout the tenure of the recovery that we've had an occasional pair meet up our starcrossed lovers from Atlantic coast and a Great Lakes bluebird will come together and have have a nest out of the blue. That's very uncommon.

Stuart Carlton 8:36
It's funny star crossed lovers. So speaking of star crossed lovers, we have Monty and rose in Chicago. And so these are the big as far as I can tell the big celebrity clovers. And so how did they How did this celebrity come to be? Why are they known? Exactly.

Jillian Farkas 8:52
So it's really exciting, where Chicago didn't have piping clovers nesting there for over 50 years. And then in 2019, so we they did have some at Waukegan, they've had that in the past, but Chicago itself, they didn't have a pair, and over 50 years. So in 2019, when they did nest, it was so amazing to get all the support and all the dedication there was 1000s of volunteer hours in a season to watch and monitor these birds and just to make sure that they had the best the best kind of opportunity for success. And it was just great because you don't often get you don't think about endangered bird and a downtown city. And so the fact that they're able to nest and survive and thrive really is just kind of a passion story or you get to really get involved and get to know these, these birds and all the birds have their own distinct personality and so it just makes it that much more sweet when they do succeed because you're putting all this time and effort into it and it's the underdog story. They're not they're not necessarily He's supposed to succeed or they've had a rough go about it. So when they do it just makes it a cause for celebration.

Stuart Carlton 10:05
Yeah, Chicago is not exactly ideal plover habitat, I guess. Right?

Jillian Farkas 10:09
Well, it is. I mean, they have a lot of wide beaches that allow the piping clovers to nest and it's definitely unique are we kind of they pop up in places that you might not expect? We have a site and Michigan which is one of the only like one of two places I think in the United States that has RV capabilities on state property. And so they have a huge RV dune complex at Silver Lake State Park. And we have piping clovers that nests there and there you can hear RVs and people going up and over dunes and yet somehow we're able to fledge piping plover chicks are that they they enjoy it?

Stuart Carlton 10:50
So are these are off road vehicles? Right? Correct. Yeah. Which is super fun, but not necessarily the most environmentally friendly thing you can do? Correct? Yes, that was actually a big moment. For me. I remember, as a kid, I used to really hate jet skis, because you know, especially back then they were really dirty. And they would pollute the water and all that. And then I got on a jet ski. And it refined my view of environmental issues, I think is what I will say. I imagine the same is true with RVs. So who gets to name these things, what money and roles, presumably their parents did not name them. Or if they did, I feel like the story would actually be a little different with the English speaking birds. But So who gets to name these suckers are these beautiful, cute cotton balls on matchsticks or whatever?

Jillian Farkas 11:35
Yes. So it, it kind of depends on the region. So and informally sufficient Wildlife Service itself, we do not name the birds. We appreciate partners that want to name the birds, and it makes it a little bit easier to refer to them. But sometimes we have some internal names because each of the birds get a unique band combination. And so sometimes it's a red, red red band, or it's a blue orange blue band. And so then that's called Bob or we'll call him Bob or her Bob and or if it's a little a little are a light blue band. So there's a little bob because it'd be a lowercase b. So they kind of have sometimes informal names that were able to refer to them, or there's a Wisconsin bird with two red bands. And so they call her red, because two R's next to each other. So there's some kind of informal naming to it. But like with the Chicago, they had brought together a kind of naming panel or just tried to trying to reflect the community to try to represent the strengths of Chicago. And so we weren't involved in that. But we always love seeing what the community comes up with and and seeing where those those fledglings end up.

Stuart Carlton 12:43
I guess you worry or maybe you don't but do you worry about like anthropomorphizing a little too much? Or is it just in good fun? I guess.

Jillian Farkas 12:49
So it is a mix. And I think it depends on the wildlife biologist. So I am so grateful when people want to get involved and kind of name these things. And it is sad when we do lose a piping plover that gets so much support behind it. But I think that just highlights how important recovery is and what kind of obstacles we're coming up against. So it's unfortunate when we lose the spirit that has this lovely name or that we've been watching for a while, but it just goes to show how hard it is to spend months breeding in the Great Lakes and then traveling 1000 plus miles away to the wintering ground and trying to come back and thrive and avoid predators and people in the stress and so so I guess there's maybe it's not the best thing to anthropomorphize them, but it's it helps us connect, connect with wildlife.

Stuart Carlton 13:40
I love it personally, but I understand why, you know, it's hard, but no, you're right, then it on the other side when something happens. It can be kind of rough, I guess. But so you mentioned that, you know, there are obstacles and threats. And so you say there are about 75 breeding pairs, I think you said

Jillian Farkas 13:55
we had 74 breeding pairs this year we had 72 Technically breeding females, some of them swapped partners if they lost a partner due to predation or some other issue but it's it's more than what we had last year, we only had 64 pairs and

Stuart Carlton 14:09
this kind of by volunteers. How do you how do you know that these numbers anyway, we it's a big

Jillian Farkas 14:12
effort. So that's why I really love this program where we'll have federal state partner partners, tribal partners, we have volunteers we work with universities, we work with zoos, we work with just Ebert observations. And so everyone's really coming together to try to monitor these birds. So typically, some of the sites like Sleeping Bear Dunes, they hire a small staff to monitor these birds because they have the kind of artist stronghold for the population. Currently they have 30 plus pairs, they're the season which is almost half of what our whole population is. And so being able to get daily reports about the pullovers are being able to put up an exposure, which is just kind of a metal frame that we put over the nest to try to discourage predators. isn't trying to protect the clovers and they're vulnerable and incubating. So it's really a huge effort to go about about this. And so Chicago, we had a huge volunteer effort. And as well as Ohio this year, we had an astounding effort to really watch these, these piping clovers. And they had two hour shifts between 6am and 10pm, to just really have a full, full idea of what was going on. And so we get a lot of a lot of information from those reports.

Stuart Carlton 15:27
Oh, that's great. And so what are the threats? Well, so whenever I hear endangered species, I always assume it's a habitat issue. Is that the case here? Are there other threats that are of concern?

Jillian Farkas 15:37
The reason why we think some of the numbers got as low as they did is in the early 1900s, some folks would, in general with with birds, they would, they would take them for their feathers for decorations over hats and what have you. And so piping clovers are pretty dependable and going to the beach. So they kind of were were an easy target. So I think that that historically, there used to be 500 to 800 pairs, and they're only nesting around the Great Lakes. And so they weren't super huge, or there wasn't a ridiculous amount of pairs before they started declining. And so it just makes each pair that much more important. So between wanting to have birds in museums or having been killed for meat or for fancy feathers, we just kind of we lost a bunch in the beginning. And then once we had different legislation go through between like the Lacey Act or the Migratory Bird Bird Treaty Act, they kind of stopped piping plover lost by hunting, but like you were saying, there's just then continued habitat loss, especially after the wars people were building a lot along the coast and just getting hurt and beach development, which made it harder for piping plovers to have habitat. And so we got down to about a historic low, I think of 17 pairs at the time of listing. And we've just been slowly but surely moving the needle towards recovery. Yeah, when

Stuart Carlton 16:56
was when was 17 pairs? What was the lesson? I guess?

Jillian Farkas 16:58
It was elicited in 1986.

Stuart Carlton 17:01
Okay, so since then 17 to 75? I don't know what's that about five times as much? A little less than that. So we're getting there, I guess. But and the trajectory, you said is is upward?

Jillian Farkas 17:11
Yeah, it's definitely increasing. And it just, it just depends with most wildlife trends, a population can fluctuate due to environmental conditions in a given year. So last year, we didn't have as many without automated been. Due to the pandemic, we didn't always get our volume, like our people out there. Canadian partners are unable to get out to the beach until June and a lot of the nesting takes place before June to be able to get those exposures. And so

Stuart Carlton 17:34
yeah, so there's a lot the error bars on the count last year, or in 2020 a bit higher. How about this year was it was a little better, I guess, because of vaccines and stuff, hopefully.

Jillian Farkas 17:42
Well, we were just able to get a Yeah, I think vaccines helped, we kind of knew what to expect or how we're able to do housing for some of these sites and different capacities. And, and so we kind of knew a little bit about, I guess what we're doing and and this year, I think also what contributed to our successes, we had lower lake levels for the first time the past couple years. I think that that allowed for us to have less wash outs us to have more habitat available. So it's really great to see.

Stuart Carlton 18:12
Excellent. I never thought about how water levels can affect that. We've done a couple shows on water level stuff, and I'll put links to those in the show notes. But yeah, that's really interesting. Oh, and you can find the show notes that teach me about the great lakes.com/ 39 The number three nine because this is episode 39. So I'm already in love with piping clovers. I did not know the existed last week, but now I'm they're cute. They've got adorable names, some of them, but many out there still to be named. And it's like a good story. So if I want to go help or if our listeners want to go help with piping plovers, what's the best thing they can do? Is it you know working on hardened shoreline issues? Is it helping with these counts? Is it voting? Well don't tell people not to vote. We both work for the government. But what is the what is the deal? How can people best help?

Jillian Farkas 18:58
So I think it's really great you don't have to be a biologist to be involved the science there's so many different citizen science apps are reporting it to our Great Lakes piping plover website or on E word will typically start to see it so we can start to see where our piping clovers and in April Are they coming and kind of when to expect different nesting but but in general when they're they're here breeding you know people in my life can can share the beach and as long as you're kind of keeping your distance you can still walk and fish and kayak and just enjoy being a beach goer. But just respecting I guess the space or sharing the shore is kind of what we really tried to to emphasize and a lot of times people want their pets to enjoy the beach but sometimes dogs and other animals can go after birds or harass birds or cause stress so we we appreciate when folks have their dogs on leash at beaches essentially are piping clovers are occurring and then just in general by reducing your food waste I guess that you leave at the beach because that can attract other predator like music predators like raccoons or possums that can target piping plover nests. And so we just said if you can minimize your trash, that sounds so great and just supporting wildlife conservation and encouraging your neighbors and friends just to also appreciate piping clovers, they're easy to fall in love with have a picture on your phone and see this amazing thing. And if you ever see monitors the beach are typically more than happy to show you in our scope like this is what we're looking at. This isn't this is why it's special. It's so rare, to be able to have an endangered bird in your backyard and just being able to share that with people and excitement. It's always it's rewarding.

Stuart Carlton 20:34
It's really wonderful. Well, this is a fascinating information. And I really appreciate you sharing it with us. But that's actually not why we invited you here on teach me about the Great Lakes today. The reason we invite you to teach me teach me about the Great Lakes need more coffee is to ask you two questions, the first of which is this. If you could choose to have a great doughnut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch? Which one would you choose?

Jillian Farkas 21:00
I knew that there was a secret reason I was invited on this podcast, I would definitely choose a doughnut and so there's a donut place in Lansing called strange matter. It's definitely strange better coffee if you need to look at some good donut pictures. I recommend looking at their Instagram but they are phenomenal. And I have to stop myself from going there every day.

Stuart Carlton 21:22
So when I go there, right normally the next question is Where should I go but you being a go getter I have already given you that information. So when I go to strange manner coffee, I'm gonna get the coffee, obviously, what doughnuts should I get?

Jillian Farkas 21:33
So this might be controversial, controversial, but I love their lemon lavender doughnut, lemon lavender. It's just like a nice Yoga Day in your mouth. It's just relaxing. And you just can't go wrong. But some people are say lavender tastes like so I don't want to be associated with those people. But I really enjoy that

Stuart Carlton 21:56
Yoga Day in your mouth. There we go. Lemon lavender that's, I'm in I'm in. I don't know when I'll be in Lansing next. I will. And so the second question, this is actually new version, we change up our second question every now and again when I get bored with the old version. So you were the first person to so you've got it's blue, blue ocean wide open.

Jillian Farkas 22:16
Blue greatly. I think actually no oceans. We're gonna

Stuart Carlton 22:19
That's right. It's blue lake. Good. Such a solid point. Would you like to host the show? I feel like maybe we'd be better off. Okay, good. Is there a special place in the Great Lakes like that? What's a special place that you know what a great lakes you hold dear to your heart that you'd like to share with our audience.

Jillian Farkas 22:37
So I know I should probably say a piping Clover spot and there's so many great places looking bear is always a treasure. But I really enjoy the upper peninsula and in the Porcupine Mountains that kind of butts right up against Lake Superior, especially in the fall. It's just so peaceful and there's so many different kinds of hiking localities and you just get a great view of the water. I just don't think you can go wrong really anywhere along the Great Lakes that just is a special special place in my heart.

Stuart Carlton 23:04
Oh, that sounds beautiful. I'll have to check it out next time. I'm up on the up. Yeah, fantastic. Well, a Jillian Fergus Fish and Wildlife Biologist with US Fish and Wildlife Service and of course the Great Lakes piping plover coordinator. Where can people go to find out more about the work that you do piping, Clovers and so on.

Jillian Farkas 23:22
So we have a website called Great Lakes piping plover.org So pretty easy to remember but also if you want to look at our Fish and Wildlife Service website you can look at Fish and Wildlife fws.gov/midwest/east Lansing slash te slash py PL for pypl. So super rolls off the tongue easy to remember, but it's fine. So both both of those places you can you can learn a lot more about typing clovers and how to help them help insert

Stuart Carlton 23:51
letters. Perfect. Well, Jillian Farkas, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

Jillian Farkas 23:57
Thanks for having me.

Stuart Carlton 24:17
So I've never heard of piping plover, and I was glad to hear about him because they are cute. They do look like it'll kill deer. And it's an interesting story. Hopefully we'll see those numbers continue to go up. And that's gonna do it for us this week. Make sure that you do the likes and the subscribes this I haven't asked you to do that while Hey, could you leave a review, maybe leave a review. If you want to leave a five star review if you want to leave a lower star review. That is your right but I recommend you do a different podcast to that for a different podcast rather than this one. But we'll see. Anyway teach me about the Great Lakes is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant we encourage you to check out the great work that we do at AI sea grant.org And also at i l i and Sea Grant on Facebook, Twitter. all your different social medias teach me about the Great Lakes is produced by hope charters Carolyn Foley Megan gun and reedy miles. The increasingly busy. Ethan Chitty is our associate producer and our fixer. Our Superfund podcast artwork is by Joel Davenport. Joel, we're missing you. I hope you're coming back soon. The show is edited by the awesome Quinn Rosen. I encourage you to check out her work at aspiring robots.com If you have a question or a comment about the show, send us an email. Teach me about the great lakes@gmail.com Au. Or you know, leave a message on our hotline that is 765496 I SG for Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. I think that's for 474 You can also follow us on Twitter at Teach Great Lakes and so thank you so much for listening. And of course, keep greatin' those lakes!