Meet the Piping Plovers of NYC

photo credit: NYC Plover Project

Who doesn't love going to the beach in the summer? Here in New York City, we are lucky to have miles of beautiful beaches to relax on the sand, take dips in the ocean, maybe enjoy an ice cream cone or have a picnic with our families.

But did you know that tiny shorebirds called piping plovers share our busy beaches in the summertime to rear their chicks, and they need our help to keep their families safe?

Read on to learn some fun piping plover facts, why they need our help, and simple things you can do to share the shore and keep these little birds safe all summer long!

All about Piping Plovers

Piping plovers (scientific name: Charadrius melodus) are adorable. They are also a federally protected species that is endangered in New York State. This means it is against the law to bother or hurt the birds or their nesting sites.

There are only 6,000-8,000 of these birds left in the whole world. That is a very small number.

photo credit: USFWS

photo credit: NYC Plover Project

Plovers are tiny! Adults are only 5-6 inches long (about the size of a can of soda) and weigh about 2 ounces, less than a scoop of ice cream. They are really good at blending into their surroundings to hide from predators. How many can you spot in this photo?

photo credit: USFWS

Plover chicks are even tinier and harder to see! Can you spot the chicks in this photo?

Plovers and other shorebirds play an important role in keeping our beaches wild and healthy for all of us to enjoy.

Piping plovers eat insect larvae, marine worms, beetles, and other beach-dwelling invertebrates on the beaches, dunes, and tidal areas of our shoreline. This foraging reduces the number of pests and keeps our beaches cleaner [1]

Plovers don't make typical bird nests. Instead of making nests out of twigs high up in trees, piping plovers make shallow depressions, called scrapes, right in the sand above the high tide mark. The female lays one egg every other day until four eggs are in the nest. The male and female birds take turns on the nest to keep their eggs warm.

photo credit: Jen Kepler

A piping plover nest

photo credit: USFWS

A robin's nest

The chicks hatch after about 30 days. The parents quickly remove broken egg shells so predators can't easily find the nests.

Piping plovers are born ready to run! Chicks must go to and from the shoreline to feed, and they cannot fly until they are about one month old.

photo credit: NPS Climate Change Response

Piping Plovers in NYC

Two piping plovers at the shoreline of a NYC beach

Every March and April, piping plovers fly north to New York City to nest on the sandy beaches of the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens in Fort Tilden, Breezy Point, and the Far Rockaways. They stay through August to rear their young [2].

Piping plovers like to return to the same, busy beaches every year. In 2022, 115 piping plovers spent their summer on New York City beaches [3]. Sadly, very few chicks survived to fledge and fly south at the end of the season. They need our help!

Go to the next page to learn about the challenges piping plovers face and how we can all help share the shore

REFERENCES
[1] Vinelli, R. (n.d.). Charadrius melodus (piping plover). Animal Diversity Web. Retrieved April 2, 2023, from https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Charadrius_melodus/[2] Beach Nesting Birds | NYC Audubon. (n.d.). Nycaudubon.Com. Retrieved March 14, 2023, from https://www.nycaudubon.org/our-work/conservation/birds-of-ny-harbor/beach-nesting-birds[3] Schneiderman, W. D. (2022, December 9). Piping Plovers Numbers Decline With Troubled Year—The Wave. The Wave - Rockaway’s Newspaper since 1893 | https://www.rockawave.com/articles/piping-plovers-numbers-decline-with-troubled-year/[4] Share the Shore. (n.d.). Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy. Retrieved March 31, 2023, from http://www.jbrpc.org/sharetheshore[5] An Artistic Way to Share the Shore. (2020, May 20). Audubon. https://www.audubon.org/news/an-artistic-way-share-shore

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