Plovers, terns and oystercatchers set up housekeeping
Beaches remain open
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
As migratory nesting shorebirds, piping plovers and least terns are the darlings of island bird monitors during the spring and summer, but the bane of fishermen, dog owners and other beach users.

Piping Plover

Both bird species, along with American oystercatchers, are setting up housekeeping as you read this: sitting on eggs and feeding their chicks, after having flown hundreds or thousands of miles to get here along the Atlantic Flyway, the migratory bird route that runs north-south along the East Coast, and extends up into Canada and down into South America.

For now at least, their nesting has not interrupted the driving habits of the island's Homo sapiens.

Nantucket Conservation Foundation ecologist Karen Beattie reports that Eel Point is the place to be for these nesting shorebirds right now.

"We have eight pairs of plovers nesting and at least one nest has hatched said Beattie. "We also have a large number, [over 200 pairs] of least terns setting up [and] we have five pairs of the oystercatchers at the Bathtubs [on Eel Point] and two pairs in the marsh."

Least Terns

On Foundation properties elsewhere around the island, Beattie said there are two pairs of plovers with nests on each side of the closed opening of Hummock Pond on its barrier beach, but one nest got washed out by storm waves and its plovers are currently trying to re-nest. There is also a small least tern colony on that barrier beach.

Three or four nesting pairs of plovers are on the harbor and ocean sides of the Haulover, along with a few oystercatcher nests. On the Foundation's Coatue properties, Beattie reports two pairs of nesting plovers on Coatue Point and 13 oystercatcher nests. And at Squam Pond off Squam Road, Nantucket bird expert Edie Ray spotted both plovers and terns, but no nests yet.

Out on Great Point, Trustees of Reservations Property Manager Steve Nicolle said that there are more seals occupying Great Point than plovers and terns - at last count around 100 - and that his one nesting pair of piping plovers is now protected by a wire cage (called an "exclosure") on the outside of Coatue just west of the Galls. This nest forced Nicolle to close about 200 feet of the beach to vehicle traffic.

"It's a four-egg nest [and] we don't know when it's hatching," he said. "We closed it to give the birds some space, but there is still access to Coatue and there is still access to Great Point."

The town, according to Beach Manager Jeff Carlson, has three nesting piping plover pairs on Jetties Beach. One pair now has three chicks to feed while another has two chicks running around. Still another is incubating three eggs.

The last time Carlson got out to Esther Island, he found eight pairs of plovers looking like they were getting ready to nest and 60 to 100 least terns flirting with each other. And on the town's property on Low Beach out in 'Sconset, Carlson is monitoring several piping plovers that have yet to pair up and build nests.

Least terns can come from as far away as the eastern coastline of South America, flying a 3,500- mile roundtrip between Nantucket and their winter haunts, arriving here in early May and departing in late September. They pair up and scratch nests in the sand in large colonies that number in the hundreds on island beaches such as Eel Point, Smith's Point and Great Point, and on the shores of Tuckernuck and Muskeget islands.

"After they finish breeding, they do a post-breeding dispersal," said Ray. "They actually go north for a while and then go south for the winter."

Ray said plovers arrive on Nantucket from late March into April from warmer East Coast climes like Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. After pairing up, they also scrape small depressions into open stretches of sand, oftentimes on barrier beaches. After the chicks have fledged, these plovers typically hang around the island as late as September but, like the terns, their schedule is dependent on when their eggs hatch and how soon their chicks are able to fly.

"Part of it depends on when the babies fledge," said Ray. "A lot of it is weather-dependent. "If we have a big storm and it takes out all the nests, it keeps getting further and further into the season."

Nor'easters last spring washed out several plover nests along the island's eastern shore, forcing the nesting pairs to re-nest. Those that did lay eggs a second time, had to leave that much later in the season, Ray said. Plovers whose first nests survived produced young that got the benefit of a full season of building muscle and packing on fat for the long commute down south.

American oystercatchers, several of which were observed during last year's Christmas Bird Count, typically alight on Nantucket in mid-April, nesting near saltmarshes and on barrier beaches, and spending the summer, sometimes the fall and even part of the winter on Nantucket before flying down to various spots along the South Atlantic Coast of the U.S., said Ray.

Although the American oystercatchers' nationwide numbers are not low enough to warrant listing it in state and federal protection categories as a species of special concern, a threatened species or an endangered species, piping plovers are classified as a threatened species and least terns as a species of special concern. That means Ray, who monitors for the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, and other bird monitors for the Trustees of Reservations, the Massachusetts Audubon Society and the town, spend much of the spring and summer walking the beaches to find and protect these nesting birds.

Wherever these birds are, Ray has this advice for those who spend much of their time on Nantucket's beaches during the summer: "Let them be because once they've raised their babies, they will go somewhere else. They will re-nest if you keep disturbing them. The whole point [for them] is to get here early in the season, then let them do their thing and they'll

be out of your hair for the high season." I