Tiny piping plovers cast a tall shadow as they return to Long Island beaches

Like the waves of humans soon to arrive in search of sun and surf, piping plovers have landed on Long Island's sandy, white beaches to find mates and start their annual nesting season.

And with them have arrived temporary restrictions, as officials last month cordoned off dozens of sections of beaches around the Island to give the tiny shorebirds some privacy and protect them from natural predators — and from humans.

Beach restrictions will be lifted in late August, when the birds leave.

Plover experts say those measures have helped save the birds from extinction, though they still are designated by the federal government as a threatened species. The federal Endangered Species Act prohibits harassing, harming, hunting, shooting and trapping the birds. In New York, they're on the endangered species list.

Tiny but tenacious — plovers are less than 6 inches long and weigh under 3 ounces — plovers winter in Southern states and the Caribbean before flying hundreds of miles north for the spring and summer. They are found as far north as the Great Lakes, but their favorite nesting grounds include Fire Island, the Hamptons and Cape Cod.

“Where they like to nest is really highly priced real estate,” said John Turner, senior conservation policy analyst for Islip-based nonprofit Seatuck Environmental Association. “Long Island is really one of the key strongholds for the species.”

New York's plover population dropped to fewer than 400 nesting pairs around 2015 before rebounding last year to 636 pairs, or a total of 1,272, said Steven T. Papa, senior fish and wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Shirley. He added that was above the agency's annual goal of 575 pairs for the state.

“I actually think it’s a conservation success story," Turner said last week in a phone interview.

It's believed only about 800 nesting plover pairs reside in the eastern United States.

Ornithological influencers

Despite their size, the birds have the power to alter human activity.

Last summer, Montauk officials twice postponed their annual Fourth of July fireworks display when a plover set up shop at the show's launch point.

But the birds and their young — Turner described plover chicks as resembling "little fuzzy lollipops" — are vulnerable to a range of threats, including people.

In June 2023, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offered a $5,000 reward after discovering the theft of two piping plover eggs in Far Rockaway.  

A year earlier, damaged nests were found at Jones Beach and Robert Moses State Park, and in Southampton near Shinnecock East County Park, officials said.

Those incidents happened in spite of efforts to protect the birds by placing string fencing with orange flags — called "symbolic" fencing — at about 100 nesting areas on beaches across the Island.

Authorities are circumspect about where exactly restricted areas are located. Those areas can be moved as nests are found, officials say.

Restricted areas extend from dunes where plovers build their nests down to the waterline, where the mates and their young forage for crustaceans, mollusks, marine worms and insect larvae.

An invitation and a warning

The low-key fencing is meant to warn humans to keep their distance, but also invite visitors to observe the creatures in their natural habitat, said Shelby Casas, coastal program manager for the Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary and Audubon Center in Oyster Bay.

“These birds are ground-nesting birds. Their nests are really well-camouflaged. Their eggs look like rocks,” Casas said last Tuesday in a phone interview. “It’s tricky to find those nests [because of] what the birds are trying to do — hide them.”

But she added, “There's always ways for people to still observe them, if they’re interested, from a safe distance.”

Nesting season for plovers lasts through the spring. Chicks start hatching around Memorial Day.

“The birds show up ahead of the people by several weeks," said Chris Allieri, executive director of the NYC Plover Project, which monitors 50 to 60 nesting pairs annually in Far Rockaway and Breezy Point. "By the time the nests are beginning to hatch [in] late May into early June, that’s exactly when people are coming to the beach.” 

Unlike other bird species whose chicks are virtually helpless at birth, plovers are “precocial birds” whose chicks are born fully coordinated, densely feathered and ready and raring to go hunt with their moms and dads, Turner, of the Environmental Association, said.

“Within a couple of hours of being born, they are fully functioning,” he said.

By Labor Day, the fledglings will join their parents in a mass migration back to the South.

More than likely, they'll be back next spring.