Piping Plover chicks
Charadrius melodus
Piping Plover · Arverne Preserve · 20 June 2026
Two Piping Plover chicks on the open sand at Arverne, cotton-ball bodies on outsized legs that can already outrun a person. Piping Plovers nest on the Atlantic beaches from Newfoundland to the Carolinas, on exactly the open sand that people want, and the Rockaway beaches are among the few in the city where they still do.
The chicks leave the nest scrape within hours of hatching and feed themselves from the start. The species is federally threatened, and beaches known to hold nesting pairs are fenced and monitored through the summer for exactly this reason; a pair of chicks this size represents a season's protection working as intended.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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