Rough year for plovers

On July 1, just days before thousands of beach-goers arrived for the annual fireworks display, four tiny piping plover eggs hatched on a thin stretch of sand in Scituate known as ''The Spit." Knowing that the newborn chicks, whose bodies were about the size of cotton balls, might not survive the onslaught of so many people, coastal waterbird monitor Monique McHenry decided to make her stand.

Forgoing personal plans, McHenry logged eight hours a day on the beach during the holiday weekend, watching over the nest while reminding beach patrons not to tread on marked plover nesting grounds. Twice she returned in the morning to find protective fencing torn down. Twice she put the fencing back up.

In the end, McHenry's efforts were for naught: all four plover chicks died, victimized not by careless humans, but by red foxes on the prowl.

It's been that kind of year for piping plovers, a threatened species whose numbers have been declining since 2002 despite intense efforts to protect their nesting grounds on more than 100 beaches from Salisbury to Provincetown.

State officials estimate there's been a 3 percent decrease in the number of mating pairs this year -- down to 475 -- due to several factors including coastal flooding, aggressive predators, vandalism, and even theft. Because so many nests failed, fewer birds are likely to return next spring.

Wildlife officials most responsible for the protection of plovers say the falling figures are cause for concern, but not panic. Scott Melvin, a senior zoologist with the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, points out that Massachusetts' plover population is still four times as large as it was when conservation efforts began in earnest in 1984. Annual fluctuations, he said, are to be expected.

At the same time, Melvin acknowledged that the state's plover population -- which accounts for a third of the Atlantic Coast's plovers -- has been stuck at around 500 mating pairs for the past decade despite significant conservation efforts.

''The population has clearly leveled off," he said. ''The question is whether it's going to stay there or trend upward or trend downward. We don't know the answer to that."

Last month's strange theft of a set of piping plover chicks from a Duxbury beach by an unidentified woman and teenage male startled conservationists across the state. But while humans were responsible for some lost eggs and chicks this summer, we were hardly the plovers' worst nemesis.

Two May northeasters washed away large sections of beach where hundreds of plovers had built nests and laid eggs. Many plovers rebuilt their nests after the first storm only to have them wiped out again about 10 days later. Full-moon tides at the end of May destroyed some of the nests, too.

The weather-related delays -- which forced some plovers to lay as many as five sets of eggs this summer, wildlife officials said -- pushed back the nesting season by several weeks. Instead of hatching in early June, most plover eggs hatched when beaches were teeming -- not only with people, but also with predators.

What the tides didn't claim, foxes, coyotes, skunks, gulls, crows, and great horned owls often did.

''It's a tough world out there on the beach," said Jean Adams, a US Fish and Wildlife Service official with the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island. ''If you ever saw a baby plover, it's like a cotton ball with legs. You say, 'How do these little things survive?' "

For conservationists, the declining plover numbers are clearly frustrating, mainly because efforts to protect the birds were as robust as ever this year. Signs warning beach-goers about plover nesting grounds were posted on seemingly every beach; dozens of volunteer monitors from the Massachusetts Audubon Society and smaller conservation groups kept daily counts of plover eggs; town officials in several Cape Cod communities did their part by restricting off-road vehicles from beaches where chicks were hatching.

''It's very hard to not take it personally," said Bridget Haines, a volunteer monitor with Mass. Audubon, whose Sandwich beaches recorded their worst chick output in a decade.

''We just had an end-of-the-season meeting. All our data and productivity results were flashed up on a large media screen," she said. ''There were tears [of joy] that came when sites with high productivity went up. Then yours comes up with one of the lowest, and it's very hard to not feel discouraged and blame for what has happened."

Still, there were some positive signs this summer. Electric fencing on Sampson's Island in Osterville stopped predators from reaching both plover and tern nests there, according to Andrea Jones, director of Mass. Audubon's South Shore regional office, which monitors more than 75 sites. Plum Island's ''Plover and Wildlife Festival" in May helped spread the word to stay away from nesting areas. Save Popponesset Bay, a Mashpee neighborhood association, helped purchase a permanent sign informing residents about plover nesting on Popponesset Spit.

Melvin, who works with the state's Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program, said the state and partner organizations will do even more next year to explore ways to reduce predator attacks at key sites, including testing new types of protective cages for nests.

''You realize it's a fine line that we're walking," he said. ''If we can just get from 1 chick per [mating] pair to 1.5 chicks per pair, that's the difference from a population that's on the decline to a population that's increasing. If we hadn't lost those nests to flooding . . . I think we may have even seen an increase in population."

''To me, piping plovers are an integral part of the coastal Massachusetts environment," he added. ''I have no doubt that 500 years ago there were hundreds if not thousands of pairs of piping plovers nesting all along the sandy beaches of Massachusetts. This is a species that Thoreau wrote about, that he saw on the beaches during his walks on Cape Cod. . . . A lot of us feel it's worthwhile and justifiable to hang on to them."