Piping Plover chick
Charadrius melodus
Piping Plover · Arverne Preserve · 20 June 2026
A Piping Plover chick alone on open sand and gravel at Arverne, which is exactly where it is safest and most exposed at once.
The mottled down matches the beach well enough to fool a hawk overhead, but does nothing against a footstep. It is this vulnerability at ground level, more than anything about the adult, that put the species on the endangered list in the first place, and why the beach is roped off from April to August.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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