April 28th – The Saga of ‘T5’

[Many of you, who have been associated with HBO for some time, will remember Jeff MacLeod from his days of working on a Master’s at McMaster (and a banding subpermit at HBO). He went on to earn his PhD in clinical psychology from Dalhousie and now practices on Cape Breton Island. But that just pays the bills. His real passion (next to his family) is studying birds. Jeff is the guy that founded this blog and continues to support me in carrying it on by solving every and all technological questions. Below is a description of a sighting that he made of a Piping Plover, taking a picture with his scope and camera that was good enough to read the bird’s band. This lead to an intriguing story about this bird’s travels:]
On April 25, I found two Piping Plovers in Edwardsville, NS along a beach that is part of an area slated for a port development. I didn’t notice the bands that evening but went back the next day and noticed that they each had an aluminum band on one leg and black marker with a visible identifier on the other. The markers are not easy to read, but after attempts for a couple of days myself and another birder identified that one of the birds is “T5” and the other has a black marker that has the identifier code worn off. The sighting was shared with some researchers involved tracking these birds and Dr. Cheri Gratto-Trevor replied that T5 was banded as a chick in Eastern PEI in 2014 and has not been observed on breeding grounds since then. The bird has been observed in the Bahamas in the winter, in Southern Nova Scotia in the fall of 2015 and 2017, and along the eastern seaboard of the US in the spring of 2017 (GA), 2018 (GA and NJ), 2019 (GA), 2020 (GA and NY) and 2021 (GA). I walk at this location often and will continue to watch to see if T5 and the potential mate hang around. I saw T5 again today, so it has been here for four days now.
Jeff MacLeod