Plover population booms, public urged to help protect nesting area on Shell Beach

Piping plover fan and volunteer steward Jean Lawless doesn’t try to hide her excitement about what she called an “unprecedented” population explosion on Shelter Island. She’s not referring to the number of people, but rather piping plover families — four of them in four nests — that have taken up residence on Shell Beach.

Not to be outdone by the feathered cousins, least tern have nested all over Shell Beach. Their eggs are under the sand and very easy to step on and crush without even knowing you’ve done it.

As for the rarer plover, Ms. Lawless said in a phone interview on Tuesday that one nest has produced four chicks, and three nests were still occupied by parents. There are four eggs per nest, so that’s 16 eggs, she said. “We haven’t had three nests in years,” she said, so having four is “rare and really exciting.”

A Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) fact sheet describes piping plovers, an endangered species in New York, as weighing one-and-a-half to two-and-a-quarter ounces. They build their nests in sandy areas near dunes, but with little or no shore grass.

The piping plover start arriving on the breeding ground from early to mid-March. During May and June, one egg is laid every other day until the average clutch of four eggs is complete.

It’s simply marvelous to see so many of them, said Ms. Lawless, who’s obviously attached to the small shore birds. In 1999, she was appointed piping plover steward by
Peconic Land Trust, the land preservation organization that has preserved and protected Reel Point, at the end of Big Ram Island. There were piping plovers there then, Ms. Lawless said, but there haven’t been any nests recently. “Not in 10 years,” she said. And piping plover nesting grounds at Crab Creek Beach and Silver Beach were never successful.

But the birds are thriving and multiplying on the long stretch of Shell Beach in three specially built exclosures set up by the town.

Ms. Lawless explained that at one time the Mashomack Preserve provided the town with piping plover stewards, but because of financial constraints, it is no longer able to do so and the town has taken over the job of protecting the endangered and threatened birds.

Town employee Rob Gorcoff, also a piping plover steward, described the “exclosures” set up by the town as cages that allow the plovers to come and go, but keep out predators that include not just fox and raccoons. Unleashed dogs present the most serious danger to the nesting areas, both Mr. Gorcoff and Ms. Lawless said.

And if the piping plovers aren’t enough to satisfy ardent shore-bird watchers, last year the long stretch of Shell Beach become a summer breeding ground for least terns.

Least terns weigh an ounce and there are hundreds of their eggs buried in the sand, both Ms. Lawless and Mr. Gorcoff said.

Several years ago, there was work done along Shell Beach that resulted in an area being dug out and then filled with sand, the perfect environment for least terns, which are endangered in some parts of the country but their status in New York is listed as “threatened.”

The least tern nesting ground is marked by a pink string fence that defines the area where the least terns have hidden their eggs. The beach isn’t closed, but he hopes that what he called “symbolic fencing” will alert people to the fragile and sensitive part of Shell Beach. No matter where you step in that area of beach marked by the fencing, you’ll be walking on the eggs, Mr. Gorcoff said. So don’t go there.

People need to be aware, to avoid the exclosures and the area delineated by the pink string, he added. And both Ms. Lawless and Mr. Gorcoff stressed the importance of keeping dogs leashed. “Keeping dogs away is the most important thing to protect the piping plover,” Mr. Gorcoff said. “If you’re walking, stay away from the nesting areas.”

Mr. Gorcoff, town employee Brett Page, Ms. Lawless and other plover stewards check the Shell Beach breeding grounds almost every day until the birds leave.

Just like many of Shelter Island’s summer visitors, the least terns and the piping plovers are here until fall. By early September, the DEC says, all but a few stragglers will have departed for their wintering areas.

But Ms. Lawless is confident that the piping plovers will return. Four nests this year and there may be that many or “even more next year,” she said, because “the parents always come back.”