Rebecca Pugh

- Advertisement - Please Support Local Advertisers by Rebecca Pugh When you run on the beach this week, watch for the plover who dashes along the edge of the sea. The piping plover just returned to Ipswich, and it digs for worms and other invertebrates at the shoreline. It is thought that piping plovers, when they migrate, fly from Cuba to Ipswich in a single night. With a global breeding population of 8,400 individuals, it is one of the most vulnerable populations in the world.

- Advertisement - Please Support Local Advertisers by Rebecca Pugh In 1890, a New York City pharmacist, Eugene Schieffelin, thought it would be romantic to bring all the birds in Shakespeare’s writings to New York City from the Old Country. One of his imported birds was the starling. The first box of starlings perished on the way here. For the second shipment, Schieffelin paid extra for the sailors to take special care: to talk to the starlings, to feed them treats.

- Advertisement - Please Support Local Advertisers by Rebecca Pugh If you are running near a clump of cattails and hear the rusty-gate call “conk-la-ree,” the call that starts with a sharp downbeat and ends in a trill, look for the black glossy bird with red and yellow epaulets, and the gray and brown female counterpart with the rose blush on her shoulders.