I don’t think that there is any time of year, except for high summer, when the beach-goers outnumber the birds, that Jones Beach fails to be an enjoyable and rewarding birding destination.  This is especially so for someone like me, an upstater, who deeply appreciates the opportunity to watch the birds that don’t often stray far from the breaking waves on sandy shores.

After watching and photographing terns at the Coast Guard Station on Friday I drove over to West End 2 and walked out on the trail through the dunes to the beach.  On my way I saw this:

The chicken-wire cage’s purpose is to protect the nest of a pair of Piping Plovers from nest predation.  Gulls and mammals would be far too willing to make a feast of Piping Plover eggs.  Because there are so few Piping Plovers left and rampant coastal development, beach erosion, and habitat-destructive human activities all take their toll, the remaining population of Piping Plovers can’t afford to lose more members to natural predation.  The cages are placed over the nests and the plovers can go in and out but the predators can’t.

What was frustrating was being able to see the cages but not the plovers.  In addition to the cages, large swaths of the dunes and beach are roped off to protect the nesting plovers and Least Terns.  I wholeheartedly agree with the protection of the birds but I really like watching plovers.  So I was very happy when one flew over my head and landed not 20 yards ahead of me.  I walked a path that didn’t take me any closer but put the sun behind me and voila:

I had already seen a Piping Plover this year but it was still wonderful to see one again.  And it was even more wonderful that over the rest of my walk I would see seven adult Piping Plovers.  And it was even more wonderfuller that I saw four young Piping Plovers, one group of three with attending parents and one only chick:

You might notice that the picture above is not of the highest quality, but I have a reason for that.  Because the Piping Plover population is in such a perilous state I absolutely refused to put any additional pressure or stress on them.  When I saw a plover I did not try to approach it.  In fact, I tended to increase my distance from them.  These birds have enough problems without the nature paparazzi chasing them up and down the beach.  If you want to see plovers up close go look at my Killdeer pics.

Not much could top seeing my first-ever Piping Plover chicks but the main reason I had walked out to the beach was to go out on the jetty at the extreme west end of Jones Beach to sea-watch.  No, I am not particularly fond of watching waves, I went out there to try and spot birds like shearwaters, storm-petrels, and gannets, birds one normally has to go out on a boat to see.  A half-hour on the end of the jetty netted me several Northern Gannets, four of them in various sub-adult plumage but the one in adult plumage, well, that made getting soaked by salt spray worth it (I strongly recommend keeping an eye on the sea for random big waves when standing out on a jetty).  The looks were nowhere near as good as the pelagic trip I was on in February of last year but they were good enough to check them off my year list.

And on my way back to my car I was treated to fly-by American Oystercatchers: