These are just a few of nuisances that plague mating pairs of piping plovers and least terns, said Raema Obbie, a monitor with the North Fork Audubon Society. The endangered birds now look after their eggs and young behind fenced-off sections of local beaches.
"It's good for people to know what they do," said Ms. Obbie, 22, a recent graduate of Stony Brook University who monitors Southold's piping plover and least tern populations for the group.
At Causeway Beach in Nassau Point Monday morning, she and Beverly Prentice, a longtime North Fork Audubon Society member who helped found its endangered species program in 1996, explained the importance of the fenced-off areas.
Though the number of breeding pairs of piping plovers has increased in recent years, their productivity remains "stochastic," Ms. Obbie said. "That means there is a lot of unpredictable variability due to environmental factors and demographic changes. So we're still quite a ways away from meeting the recovery goal for the species."
As the least terns -- the smallest of their kind in the U.S., according to Ms. Prentice -- flew in the crisp, windy morning, Ms. Obbie explained their behavior.
"They're bringing in food to the nest," she said, adding that the members of a breeding pair take turns foraging and keeping the fragile eggs warm.
And those eggs, lying in little divots on the open beach, look like rocks.
"The eggs are so camouflaged, people step on them," Ms. Prentice said.
At the Nassau Point beach, about 20 least tern couples have nests within a roped-off enclosure, and a pair of piping plovers takes care of its own behind a small fenced-in portion of the beach.
Ms. Prentice said the nest is called a scrape -- that little divot in the sand. The baby terns stay in the scrape after they've hatched, waiting for food from their parents. In this regard, they're safe. But unlike the young piping plovers, they can't move away from a predator. Piping plovers have the ability to run and fly right out of the hatch.
Ms. Obbie said she hopes the piping plovers finish laying eggs by late June, when the beaches start to get busier. She noted that most passersby are very accepting of the roped-off portions of the beaches.
"I see mothers with their kids, pointing at the birds," she said.
When homeowners are involved in the process on their properties, she said most are enthused.
"People get excited to be a part of protecting an endangered species," she said.
Both women said that they think the people who are most aggravated by the beach enclosures are those who want to drive on the beaches. But, said Ms. Prentice, that's more of a problem in the Hamptons.
Even so, driving on any beach is bad for the birds, because it leaves ruts in the sand, where the chicks naturally drift and often get stuck -- meaning certain death when another vehicle comes through.
"There's not much they can do," said Ms. Obbie.
That's another reason why Ms. Obbie said she cannot fathom the "Piping plovers taste like chicken" bumper-sticker trend -- or the annoyance with her work.
"We like the beach," she said. "But [the birds] need the beach."
eschultz@timesreview.com
Beaches where you can expect to see protected piping plover and least tern habitat:
* Breakwater Beach, Mattituck Inlet
* Little Creek (aka Causeway Beach), Nassau Point
*¬ Jamesport Town Beach, Jamesport
* Gull Pond West, Greenport
* Corey Creek, Cutchogue
*¬ Miamogue Point, Jamesport
* Goldsmith's Inlet, Peconic
* Hallocks Landing, Jamesport