Bruce & Grey Counties - Piping Plover Video

As the Overland Journal describes:

Overlanding is about exploration, rather than conquering obstacles. While the roads and trails we travel might be rough or technically challenging, they are the means to an end, not the goal itself. The goal is to see and learn about our world, whether on a weekend trip 100 miles from home or a 10,000-mile expedition across another continent. The vehicle and equipment can be simple or extravagant - they, too, are simply means to an end. History, wildlife, culture, scenery, self-sufficiency - these are the rewards of overlanding.

One reward during my Bruce & Grey county exploration was being able to capture (on video) a nesting Piping Plover and chick on the beach near Oliphant, Ontario which is on the eastern Lake Huron shoreline.

I later learned that this was actually a very special reward because this specific Piping Plover family was the first nesting occurrence on that beach in over 30 years. The Piping Plover is endangered in the Great Lakes habitat so when the first nests since the mid '70s started appearing at Wasaga, Sauble, and then Oliphant, the Ministry of Natural Resources and local volunteers sprung into action to try to protect the nests as much as possible from predators and human encroachment.

I only wish I had a stronger zoom function on my Sony HDV camcorder as this was the closest I could get to their nest. Once I spotted them with the help of the volunteers that were monitoring the nest, I set up my tripod and started recording. The chick is barely visible for the first two thirds of the clip. It then pops out of the nest and scrambles across the sand.

You can learn more about the Piping Plover from the Wikipedia article, the Royal Ontario Museum's "Species at Risk" pages, and from the Nature Canada blog.