Claryssa Martinez, Robert Treat Academy
Essex County
First Place, Essex County, Piping Plover (c) Claryssa Martinez
Piping Plover
Do you know I am? I’m the bird named Claire, the Piping Plover. You see me on a daily basis at the beach. Now I need your help to prevent my family from being endangered, so, come fly with me to the beach. Do you see this polluted part of the beach? It is where I grew up. I remember watching the sunset, playing with my friends and having delicious food for dinner. Now, it has all changed. The sky is gray, my friends are all gone and all we can find for dinner is plastic bags and tin cans. That’s when we had to move to a different beach. But, the place we are living in is being polluted and destroyed too. Well, you know my name and you know where I live. Let me tell you more information.
My scientific name is Charadius melodous. It is kind of a strange name, but it is what it is. I weigh about 43-63 grams. That’s about the weight of a cell phone! I am 18 centimeters tall and my wingspan is 38 centimeters. I’m short, but my wings are so enormous! My body color is a sandy color.
I mostly live in beaches, sand flats, sandbars and wetlands. When it gets extremely cold and it becomes winter, my family and I migrate to southern U.S., Mexico, the Bahamas and West India. Those are a lot of places to go to have a vacation and drink a smoothie of marine worms! Are you hungry? My mom just made her homemade beetle salad. “No, I’m good. I am not hungry” you say. Then, more for me!
Well, enough talking about me. Let me tell you why we, endangered species, need protection. Our habitats are being polluted. We’re being hunted and my family’s nests and eggs are being destroyed. That makes me so frustrated and it even makes me want to cry. Human beings are causing us to suffer like this every single day! “But why do we have to take the blame?” you say.
First reason is you humans have hands that can put things in different places and we animals have paws, or some like me, have three toes. Once I saw an 11 year old kid throw a chocolate bar rapper right on my family’s home.
The second reason is we mostly don’t own the world, you guys do. If you humans keep on doing this, we will be extinct and that does not mean see you later.
“What can I do to help?” you say. You can have a fundraiser or put our logo on popular products so that the world would know we need help.
Written by:
Claryssa Martinez
Robert Treat Academy, Newark
Teachers: Ms. Velez and Ms. Liccardi