Wingspan: 14-15 ¼ Inches

Age: May live to be 13 years old.

Range: From south central Canada east to the Atlantic, and south to Florida and the Gulf Coast.

Food: Marine worms, fly larvae, beetles, crustaceans, mollusks, and other small marine animals and their eggs.

Nesting: The nest is a slight depression in the sand sometimes lined with shells, pebbles, or bits of driftwood. It is located well above the high water mark on a beach bordering a lake or the ocean. Often on fresh spoil deposited after a storm or a dredging project. Both parents incubate 3-4 well-camouflaged eggs for 27 days. The young are precocial and leave the nest to run about on the beach within hours after hatching. Thirty to thirty five days later they begin to fly. Piping Plovers usually have one brood, but will re-nest if the first clutch is lost.

In the not too distant past, the Piping Plover was a fairly common summer resident and breeder on the South Fork. Unfortunately, this is no longer the situation. The tremendous increase in the use of beaches by humans, their animals, and vehicles has severely impacted the ability of the plovers to reproduce. While the disappearance of this bird may seem insignificant to some, its removal from the ecosystem should be viewed as a symptom of the degradation of the very environment we go to the beach to enjoy. The Piping Plover is listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.