Nickerson Beach in Summer

Summer. Spring migration over. Waterfowl season in winter over. Fall migration not here yet. Now is the time when all the birders on Long Island head to Nickerson Beach.

The birding started even before I arrived at Nickerson. Before I had arrived, I had already seen at least twenty Ospreys. Ospreys were in the air, in their nests, on poles, fishing, eating, and doing everything else possible. In short, Ospreys were everywhere.

Osprey

But arriving at Nickerson I found even more than Ospreys: twenty Black Skimmers were resting in the parking lot. Mixed in were a few Laughing Gulls, Common Terns and even an American Oystercatcher. How often are you able to pull into a parking lot and grab four life birds in five minutes?

Black Skimmers

Seeking more, I took out the scope and walked down a conveniently laid down blue mat to the actual beach. I had heard that Piping Plovers were nesting here, and I therefore read with interest a sign declaring that the territory behind was a protected nesting area for the plovers. Apparently, all plover nests are fenced in to protect it from predators, but the holes in the fence are big enough for the birds to comfortably go in and out. And so there was the answer to my question about what those little fences were for: inside the nearest one, only thirty feet away, sat a PIPING PLOVER on a nest! 

Now please understand that a picture of a Piping Plover does not fully express how charming a Piping Plover actually is. The more is so much more real in life, so much more active and interesting. So it's totally worth it to try to go see one.

Piping Plover

After seeing a Piping Plover, I continued down to the Common Tern nesting that has earned Nickerson so much fame among birders and photographers. And it was just as I had heard: terns all over, sitting on their nests, standing around, preening, commuting back and forth from the sea with fish. When the terns were occasionally disturbed, they would rise up in the air along with Black Skimmers, calling loudly, and their sheer numbers would make the sky appear white. American Oystercatchers were also there, and they had a very, very cute baby with them, picking at the sand and walking around. 

Common Tern on nest

American Oystercatcher chick

I turned back up the beach and headed back to the parking lot to attempt to photograph the skimmers skimming in the water again. Alas, upon arriving there, I found that the skimmers were not skimming with the same vigor that they had been before. However, I did get a few half-decent shots of them, a juvenile Laughing Gull, a Common Tern and a rare bird that had been reported hanging around Nickerson, a GULL-BILLED TERN making a brief flyover and a Glossy Ibis landing in the pond.

Gull-billed Tern

And that was that for the day, except for a quantity of Boat-tailed Grackles by the highway. A fine day of birding!