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Pipe plovers, scarlet shorebirds that lay their eggs in small scrapes of sand, are easy to miss as they sprint across the beach. Chris Allieri is harder to miss.
Last spring, Mr. Allieri, NYC Plover Project, an organization dedicated to protecting threatened birds on beaches in the Rockaways, Queens. He recruited more than 50 volunteers who spent most of the spring and summer patrolling the beaches to protect the rainy ones from dogs and careless beachgoers.
Some interactions can be unsettling, such as Mr. Allieri intercepting a young woman carrying a small dog from his boat on a sweltering Saturday, to the shore of Breezy Point Tip. Not far away, at least three chicks scurried across the sand, while a handful of novice plover plover swirled on the waves.
Mr. Allieri explained that the dog is prohibited. The woman said she understood and returned to the boat. But then a man came out of the boat through waist-high water and said to Mr. Allieri, “You work for the government?” asked.
Mr Allieri said he would not call the police if the dog set foot on the beach, but would call the police. The man said he didn’t like being told what to do. Before the man got back to his boat, Mr. Allieri called the Parks Police.
Arguments like this are unusual, Mr Allieri said, but days at the beach haven’t been very comforting since he started spying on the plovers.
Mr. Allieri, 47, lives in Brooklyn and owns a PR firm specializing in clean energy and climate technologies. He saw his first plover as a child on Jersey Beach with his father, an avid birder. He said it was like seeing a “unicorn.”
Last year, when Mr. Allieri was at Fort Tilden Beach at the Gateway National Recreation Area in Queens, a plover appeared on the beach next to him. Then he saw another, another.
He also saw dogs off leash chasing fragile birds.
“Who is protecting them?” said Mr. Allieri.
He spent most of the first summer of the coronavirus pandemic photographing raindrops and communicating with the National Park Service, which oversees the Gateway.
This spring, Mr. Allieri launched the Plover Project to educate beachgoers about the birds and, if necessary, call authorities to protect them.
Plovers have seen their coastal habitats destroyed by human development and erosion. At one point there was almost more 720 pairs of Atlantic pipe tweezers left.
The birds are federally protected under the Endangered Species and Migratory Birds Treaty Acts. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a total of 5,983 cases were investigated under both laws in 2020, of which a small proportion were investigations into plovers.
Plover chicks start running and feeding on their own practically from birth and are often vulnerable to many predators such as ghost crabs, seagulls and raccoons. Human proximity can prevent chicks from feeding, which can be a death sentence.
Once grown, the tiny birds become world travelers and migrate south each year from the sandy beaches along the Atlantic Coast, the Great Lakes and river systems in the Great Plains, three places where most of them are born. Mr. Allieri said he had one taped and nicknamed in New Jersey. Clark Kent, seen a journey of more than 1,000 miles in the Bahamas.
In the New York area, plovers tend to nest on the Jersey Shore, Long Island, and Rockaway Beach, Fort Tilden, and Breezy Point beaches in Queens. They come in March and can stay until the end of August during the warmer months when people also flock to the sea.
This timing is unfortunate, and some coastal communities have resented the birds for decades because they often protect the birds. means restricting beaches.
The entire beach can be cordoned off. It is forbidden to cross the road to a secluded place to walk dogs, fly kites, light fireworks or fish. Anyone caught damaging a clover could face heavy financial penalties and even jail time.
Protecting birds can also mean catching or killing animals that eat them. foxes in New Jersey or wild cats On Long Island, actions that anger residents. Inside Hamptons, some homeowners oppose the birds, so much so that an outspoken critic published a recipe for spit-roasted plover in a local newspaper.
West Hampton Dunes village on Long Island angry at plover regulations, necessary Fencing about half of its beachesThe mayor, Gary Vegliante, said they were hiring “clover watchers” by erecting protective structures around the burrows and patrolling the sands and moving cars by crawling on nearby roads.
“We were quarantined from our beach,” said Mr Vegliante.
But Mr Vegliante said over the years, residents have mostly come to accept the restrictions. “Birds are cute, no one wants to see them abandoned or lost,” he said.
The US Park Police enforces laws protecting plover and other threatened species on Queens beaches where Mr. Allieri watches. But there are only so many park rangers. Park Police lieutenant Tony Lordo said Mr. Allieri’s group was a great help in monitoring miles of beaches.
lt. “These are extra eyes and ears, that’s what we really need,” Lordo said at Fort Tilden Beach.
The Park Service partnered with Mr Allieri and helped teach him and the volunteers the best way to reduce conflict and approach people on the beach.
He said many people are eager to learn about the undeniably cute plover—his chicks look like a kindergarten art project, a pair of cotton balls glued to their pipe cleaner legs.
Mr. Allieri redesigned a cabin on the waterfront boardwalk in Jacob Riis Park and printed plover stickers and temporary tattoos to give to passersby.
Samantha Philbert, 30, said she joined the Plover Project because she found the birds “so cute”.
One illustrator who lives in Brooklyn said that getting to the beaches requires taking two buses for an hour and a half, and it usually stays for hours. With a sculpture of a clover egg and photographs of different shorebirds, he approaches people and tries to teach, not scold.
Ms. Philbert said she often thought of herself as an introverted Black woman. What happened when you became a Blackbirder in 2020? He asked a white woman not to walk her dog on a leash in Central Park, just to call the police.
“It’s kind of scary to be the only Black person, as in a mostly white area,” Ms Philbert said.
But apart from the rare encounters with people who were visibly drunk, “everyone has been really nice to me, smiling everywhere,” she said.
Plover numbers in the Rockaways have increased in recent years, with 46 pairs reported in 2020. Mr Allieri said he plans to continue his efforts as long as the birds continue to return to the city.
“They’re New Yorkers too,” said Mr. Allieri. “They live theirs the way we try to live ours.”
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