I had been going to post a selection of bird photos to mark Endangered Species Day today. I’d begun to plan the details – the birds to use, the captions for each and so on. Then I saw one photograph that is so charming and yet so poignant that I realised that adding further images would be superfluous. This tiny piping plover chick is a potent symbol of the vulnerability of all threatened species.

This shot was taken by award-winning and renowned wildlife photographer Melissa Groo. If you want to see the most wonderful and varied wildlife photography that you could ever imagine, please go to Melissa’s website and prepare to be amazed. You will find it HERE. 

I have posted several times about the endangered piping plovers, many of which overwinter in the northern Bahamas generally, Abaco particularly, and the Delphi Club beach specifically. There are believed to be fewer than 8000 individual birds on earth, and their little world of the shoreline is threatened at both ends of their migration, as well as at their rest ‘stopovers’ en route in either direction. Conservation programs at each end of the range are proving effective at preserving the plovers’ habitat, and the population does seem to have increased slightly. Each chick protected represents a small triumph for conservation.

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Photo credit: Melissa Groo, with thanks for the inspiration! “Less is more…”; Conserve Wildlife Foundation of NJ for their partnership conservation work with PIPL on Abaco and in the Bahamas; the originator – ?Great Lakes Piping Plover Project –  of the neat small logo…