Piping Plover chick, foraging
Charadrius melodus
Piping Plover · Arverne Preserve · 20 June 2026
A Piping Plover chick pecking along the tideline debris at the base of the dune plants at Arverne in June. Piping Plovers nest on the open Atlantic beaches from Newfoundland to the Carolinas, and the Rockaway beaches are among the few in the city where they still do.
A chick this age is already finding its own food, small invertebrates picked out of the wrack and wet sand; the parents never feed it, only guard it. The whole Atlantic population is a few thousand pairs, and a chick has roughly one chance in four of reaching the age to fly, which is why the beach here is roped off for the summer.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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