By Vic Cox

Tendrils of fog curl over the waves at UCSB’s Devereux Beach as, binoculars in hand, members of the Walker family scan the sand for snowy plover chicks. The sprightly little birds feed on the run while the humans watch for other critters, like crows, that might want to eat the brown and white-speckled balls of fluff.

“The chicks can run right after they hatch,” explains Dana Walker, who is taking his shift as a Coal Oil Point Reserve (COPR) docent with his father, Tim. But the chicks’ chief protection is their mottled down, which provides perfect camouflage when they are motionless. Unfortunately, it can also lead to humans inadvertently stepping on them.

During breeding and fledging periods a rope “fence” separates the birds’ nesting zone from human use of the beach, and docents are a vital part of the reserve’s effort to re-establish and maintain the plovers’ safety zone. The Western snowy plover’s breeding season runs from May through September, but they now live in the area most of the year so docenting is a daily routine.

Dana, who is 14, recalls another shift when he and his mother, Pat Walker, had to warn a young man and his girl friend to stay on the surf side of the rope. “She got out right away, but he walked to the end of the rope,” Dana says. Eventually, the scofflaw moved out of the threatened birds’ nesting area.

His bookseller father also recalls a few incidents when police had to cite beach users, sometimes with unleashed dogs, before the offenders realized that the reserve’s rules applied to them. “Most people are very cooperative,” says Tim.

“Docents are educators and protectors; I like to see them emphasize the education,” says Jennifer Stroh, docent coordinator for the reserve’s 60 to 80 plover volunteers, most of whom are UCSB students. Part of docent training covers possible confrontations and interacting with the public. Biologist Cristina Sandoval is COPR’s director and originator of the docent program.

Stroh, who started at COPR as a volunteer in 2001, praises the docents and says staffing is her main concern. “Ideally, I want two people together on a shift,” she says, and she hopes more UCSB staff and faculty will help. The local Audubon Society has been a reliable source of volunteers, she adds gratefully. Depending on college students as docents has the disadvantage of seeing most of them disappear during holidays and in the summer.

Docents commit to six hours of training, a tour of the reserve, and a two-hour practice shift as well as a two-hour shift once a week when they sign up. The next training session is on Saturday, Dec. 8, at 10 a.m. More details are available online at <http://coaloilpoint.ucnrs.org/subpage1/SnowyPlover/ PloverDocentPgm/indexDocPgm.html>.

The Walkers are unusual docents in that both parents try to accompany their son on shifts—and he was the one who recruited them after hearing Stroh describe the program. “It was a great idea that has born more fruit than we realized,” says Pat Walker, a 19-year UCSB staff member currently with the Center for Polymers and Organic Solids.

She notes that Dana’s enthusiasm has carried over to plover science projects and solid knowledge of not only the birds’ biology and habitat but also how to interact with people “in a non-confrontational way.” She adds, “I think that sometimes the people he talks to respond better to him than to adults.”

Most of all, she says, the birds are cute and it is fun to tell people about them.