,
Magdalen Island,
Quebec,
Canada The piping plover lives the majority of its life on open sandy beaches or
rocky shores, often in high, dry sections away from water. They can be found on the
Atlantic Coast of the U.S. and Canada on the ocean or bay beaches and on the
Great Lakes shores. It builds its nests higher on the shore near beach grass and other objects. It is very rare to see a piping plover anywhere outside of sand or rocky beaches/shores while not migrating. Notably, they are considered a
disturbance-dependent species due to their habitat's relationship with severe flooding. They need their nesting sites to be far away from the water to be dry for their entire nesting period – yet, they also need to nest in open sand. Often, this combination occurs only in sites which are thoroughly flooded once every few years, which brings in fresh sand and clears away vegetation. As human
coastal management strategies worked to minimize unpredictable flooding, their old habitats often became overgrown, and their populations declined. Nowadays, the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is forced to artificially clear shoals on the
Platte and
Missouri River to maintain some of the plovers' remaining habitat in the
Great Plains. Alongside
least terns, piping plovers also have an unusual relationship with mining. Whereas most species predictably suffer
habitat loss from mining activities in their area, these birds are known to nest in waste sand piles generated by nearby mines, as the replacement for sand bars. Those sand piles remain topped-up and hostile to vegetation overgrowth as long as the mining activity continues. Often, mining sites end up reclaimed for
housing development at the end of their lifespan, which means more construction work, and an extended persistence of waste sand piles. However, modern mining practices typically transport much of this waste sand to more remote areas, often to reuse it commercially, which limits colonization opportunities for these birds. Piping plovers
migrate from their northern range in the summer to the south in the winter months, migrating to the
Gulf of Mexico, the southern
Atlantic coast of the United States and the
Caribbean, including
The Bahamas. They have also been recorded across
Cuba, with rarer occurrences elsewhere throughout the
West Indies, and even
Ecuador and
Venezuela. They begin migrating north in mid-March. Their breeding grounds extend from southern
Newfoundland south to the northern parts of South Carolina. Migration south begins in August for some adults and fledglings, and by mid-September most piping plovers have headed south for winter. ==Behavior==