Piping Plover Nesting Season

      Today was foggy with a northeasterly wind.  I thought it would be a good day to walk and see if the weather would bring some interesting birds to the beach.  I left the mainland and drove over to one of our local beaches.  Unfortunately, as I crossed the bridge to the barrier island, the fog was a little heavier than I thought.  Visibility on the beach was limited.  I could barely see beyond the breakers and only made out a pair of laughing gulls, a common loon and a long-tailed duck.

More surprising to me was the lack of gulls sitting on the beach, actually there were none.  Usually, they ground themselves with the fog and gather in groups facing into the wind.  I did notice that posts had been planted on the beach from the dunes towards the water line.  They held signage stating that the area behind this boundary was now a piping plover nesting area and that vehicles were prohibited.  I walked the nesting zone to its southern boundary and back without seeing a plover.  It was not until my sister joined me at the beach that I heard and spotted a pair of piping plovers.  They were the first ones that my sister ever saw.

Piping plover on Seaside Park beach, 3/30/2025.  © S. Weiss

The potential nesters were outside the man-made boundaries setup for them.  Silly humans, birds can’t read!  I don’t know how successful they will be on this beach.  In several weeks the weather will get much nicer and more people will be traversing the area.  Last year, in early summer the same signs were posted, and the nesting area was loaded with blankets, umbrellas and sunbathers.  The signs did not explicitly exclude this activity, and I don’t know what the outcome was of any nesting attempts.

Piping plover nesting within an excluder at Island Beach State Park, July 2021.  The excluder attempts to keep out predators like foxes and raptors yet allows the little birds freedom to move in and out.  © S. Weiss

There are several other spots along this part of Ocean County’s beaches that are piping plover nesting areas, including a couple at Island Beach State Park, Barnegat Light State Park and elsewhere along Long Beach Island.  Wherever these little beach birds look to raise a family, such area is restricted to pedestrian only traffic.  Most of these spots are already vehicle-free zones.  A few years back, the southernmost end of Island Beach was going to be closed to sport fishing vehicles because of the plovers.  One individual informing beach motorists, such as myself, of the upcoming temporary closure explained to me why it was necessary to do so.  The plovers nest on the sand up near the dunes where they have more protection, but they forage for food near the water.  Piping plover chicks are precocial, which means they are able to freely walk around shortly after hatching.  The young and even smaller birds will follow their parents in search of food, but if they cross into a rut in the sand created by tire tracks, they can’t get themselves out of it.  Unlike their parents, the little ones cannot fly for a couple of weeks after hatching.

Downy, newborn and banded piping plovers.  © S. Weiss

But some communities are not particularly fond of these little beach puffballs.  Down in North Carolina (I’m sure in other places, too) some locals feel their right to drive on the beach is greater than the need of this endangered bird to have a safe place to try to keep its population from becoming extinct.  I came across a sign that was quite frank:

Hopefully the majority of the public is more understanding.  Plovers have been nesting on the beaches long before we were driving on them.  They only need a little real estate for a few weeks out of the year.  Their survival is our responsibility.