From the archives: Rebuilding a community of rare coastal birds

This story was originally published in Newsday on May 17, 2000

Majestic it isn't.

One of Long Island's rarest animals skitters across Jones Beach on toothpick legs, tilting its tiny feathered head back and forth in herky-jerky movements that suggest it's one paranoid bird.

The piping plover has reason to be afraid. Unlike the bald eagle, the northern spotted owl and other famous rare birds, there's little about how this 6-inch, sand- colored shorebird looks or acts that inspires people to protect it. No wonder it's forever on the run from beach goers and their four-wheel- drive trucks.

That's why about 75 people gathered recently at the West Bath House at Jones Beach State Park for a day- long crash course in the quirky habits and manifold enemies of Charadrius melodus, the piping plover.

The idea, according to the organizers of the class at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is to train a cadre of "plover stewards," most of them volunteers, to look out for the birds during the critical summer nesting and fledging season on Long Island's beaches, especially on the South Shore barrier islands.

"You're going to be our eyes and ears," Sam LiBrandi, a special agent with the wildlife service, told the assembled environmentalists, shoreline residents, students and municipal employees.

By the end of the day, class members had absorbed a long list of plover trivia, ranging from how to spot one (look for the black-banded neck, yellowish bill and orange legs) to how to protect a nest in a vulnerable spot on the beach (speed-build an "exclosure" around it). They also knew what to do if someone harasses, injures or kills this federally protected bird (write down the license plate, but don't play cop or otherwise put yourself in danger).

Above all, the group learned to appreciate - at a distance, since no one is supposed to get within 150 feet of a plover unless absolutely necessary - a plucky little creature that gets little respect.

"I think they're pretty amazing, really. I can't wait until they start hatching," said Karen Jensen Reynoso, 23. Reynoso just began a seasonal job as a plover steward for the Suffolk County Parks Department, and has already spotted 10 pairs of plovers preparing to nest.

"Plover class" has become more popular every year since it was first held in 1995, and it's now offered several times every spring as a joint effort of the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the Nature Conservancy and the Krusos Foundation of Cold Spring Harbor.

During the beach portion of the class, there are no plovers nearby - the five pairs nesting at Jones Beach this year prefer parts of the park that are much less busy than the beach in front of the West Bath House - but the class has plenty of work to do outside anyway. It splits into smaller groups to master the harder-than-it-looks task of putting up warning barriers and building protective structures around the plover nests.

The ribboned barriers are used to keep people away from known plover sites, and the wire exclosures - round, roofed structures about 15 feet across and 6 feet high - are designed to allow the small birds to walk in and out through the mesh while blocking larger crows, dogs and other predators from reaching the nest. Last year on Long Island, plover stewards built exclosures around about 50 nests with eggs, most of which successfully hatched.

The tricky part is that the exclosure-builders have to move quickly because the adult birds flee their nests when humans approach and may abandon their eggs permanently, leaving them to rot in the sun if the people don't go away within about 20 minutes.

"We try to get them done within about 10 minutes. If it takes you longer than 20 minutes, you should give up and move away from the nest," said instructor Marcelo del Puerto of the state conservation department. "My record is four minutes."

Plover monitors are assigned to watch specific stretches of beach for the summer. Most are volunteers, but some are seasonal workers paid by state, county or local governments.

"I figure there are worse places I could be working this summer than the beach," said 23-year-old Pat McCarthy of Buffalo, who landed a summer job as a plover steward on Long Island through the Student Conservation Association, a national clearinghouse for students interested in environmental work.

The success of the program is hard to gauge, but organizers point with pride to what appears to be a slow- building recovery for the plover. There are now thought to be about 1,350 nesting pairs on the Atlantic Coast - including about 200 pairs on Long Island - up from about 800 pairs in 1986, the year the bird was listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

"We think the stewardship program is working," said Dan Rosenblatt, an endangered species specialist with the state conservation department. "Hopefully, we're going to have a steward on every beach this summer."

Plovers and humans have had a long and unhappy history sharing the beaches up and down the East Coast, and Long Island has been no exception. Both species prefer the same habitat: wide-open stretches of sand between the dunes and the ocean.

Shoreline development, beach-cleaning rakes, dogs and even foxes have all taken a toll on plovers and their eggs. Four-wheel-drive vehicles have proved especially lethal during the July hatching season because the tiny chicks tend to fall into the deep tire tracks, where they are then crushed by the next vehicle following in the same tracks.

Adult birds have a different problem: They tend to crouch motionless and blend into their surroundings when danger approaches - a sensible approach when the predator is a dog or fox but not if it's an oncoming SUV.

Nor has the association with plovers always been pleasant for humans - especially since the bird won federally protected status.

Since then, state and federal environmental agencies have gone to court on the plovers' behalf to fight beach-raking plans in several communities.

They've also expanded restrictions on beach driving, July 4th fireworks displays and even kite-flying, out of fear that plover nests may be trampled. The risk to plovers has even become part of the controversy over a proposed $ 70-million federal project to pile 7.7 million cubic yards of sand onto heavily eroded beaches on Fire Island.

In a few cases, the restrictions appear to have provoked an anti-plover backlash, including several incidents in recent years on the South Shore in which nests were apparently destroyed deliberately, their eggs smashed or stolen. There have been no prosecutions so far, though anyone caught could be subject to fines or a jail term.

The only real solution, said Steve Mars of the Fish and Wildlife Service, is for people to learn to coexist peacefully with the birds.

That's why environmental agencies post signs near nesting areas, giving information about the birds, which head south in late August after hatchlings have learned to fly.

It's also why one of the most important functions of plover class is to train a small army of Long Islanders to be goodwill ambassadors on behalf of the bird, explaining to anyone who asks exactly what a piping plover is, how it acts and why it's important.

"The whole idea," said Mars, "is to get the plovers in and out of here alive and productive, so that by the end of the summer we don't get these reports of crushed birds. That's our goal every year."