Crane Beach supports an ecosystem largely unnoticed by the sunbathers. Skunks, coyotes, fox, owls and other birds live in the back dunes. Two of the bird species that use the beach, the least tern and the piping plover, are on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service list of endangered species. Since the birds nest on the beach, TTOR is responsible for protecting them - mainly from threats presented by people.

The Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, just a few miles away, is also a piping plover nesting site. The beach at the refuge is also a big attraction to people, but it is closed to the public during the bird nesting season.

Protecting the Crane Beach birds during the nesting season, March through July, presents TTOR with a financial dilemma: No people on the beach means no money to maintain the properties, including the cost of protecting the birds from other predators. Unlike TTOR properties, federal funds subsidize operating costs of Parker River refuge.

TTOR is keeping Crane Beach open to the public by actively managing multiple use of the property by beach-goers and endangered birds. A team comprised largely of summer help employed by TTOR's Ecology Department works to make this happen.

Piping plovers nest on the beach, just above the high tide line. Female plovers lay one egg per day for up to four days. Nests are shallow depressions in the sand, sometimes lined with pebbles. The birds and the eggs are well-camouflaged and difficult to spot on the beach. A human on an innocent walk on the beach is likely to step on a nest of eggs. The nesting birds are skittish and nervous. Human activity scares them off their nests. If an egg is left unprotected for more than 30 minutes it will probably overheat and not hatch.

By late June the plover eggs start to hatch. Plover chicks are precocial - they leave the nest on foot a few hours after hatching, finding their own food. They are so small that they risk getting caught in footprints or tire tracks on the beach. The chicks have difficulty keeping themselves warm in cool weather, so an adult will brood the chicks, wrapping them under their wings.

Links to web sites about to piping plovers can be found here .

Jenna and Brian walk the five-mile length of the beach every day, updating a census of every nest site and noting the bird's activities. They get information from bird behavior as well as actual visual observation of nests.

Jenna is soft-spoken but intense, and quietly projects self-confidence. The dedication she exhibits belies her status of summer employee.

Brian, also summer help, graduated with a degree in ecology this spring, thought that walking the beach and counting birds might be a nice summer job. He says he underestimated the physical demands of the job — five miles of beach and dune walking daily, in all weather, plus building, repair and removal of nest protecting fences.

Early in the season, they erected a symbolic fence, a single wire strung the length of the beach, between metal stakes with signs on alternate posts marking the nesting areas. The fence leaves about 60 feet between the high tide line and the front of the dunes.

The ecology team usually starts at 7:00 am, but Jenna was on the beach at 5:00 am this morning, in response to a report of someone allowing their dog to run free on the beach at 5:20 am the previous morning. Dogs love to run on the beach, flush birds, and don't understand the symbolic fence. Their owners often don't understand the danger their dogs represent to the nesting plovers. Natural plover predators include coyotes, kestrels and owls. Kestrels are migratory birds that are a threat during May and June, but then move on to their nesting grounds further north. Natural predators threaten the eggs, chicks, and adult birds.

The team sometimes protects a nest by constructing an exclosure around it; a fence of 4-inch wire mesh on metal posts around the nest. The mesh is big enough to allow the plovers to walk through, but excludes predators. Some of the exclosures have been covered with netting to prevent predators from flying into them. But netting is not a perfect solution. A plover, flushed by a predator, may fly into the net from inside the exclosure and get entangled.

The exclosure itself can sometimes become a problem. Kestrels alight on the exclosures, waiting for the plover to leave the exclosure, where it can be caught easily.

TTOR rangers supplement the ecology team, dealing with humans on the beach whenever it is open to the public. They try to educate the public to respect the needs of the birds. In spite of these efforts, they saw human footprints going from the symbolic fence to an exclosure earlier this year. Human presence will cause the birds to leave the nest, and predators will follow human tracks to the nests. The nest was abandoned. The TTOR staff is careful to walk past or around nests at a distance, or obliterate their tracks when they leave. Brian says he has found the beach-going humans to be very understanding and cooperative; "For example, I explain to kite fliers that if the wind takes their kite over a nest, the birds may think it's a hawk or other predator and abandon the nest. Then they might say 'Oh, okay' and move someplace else."

Chris, the team supervisor, looks younger than either Jenna or Brian. Sporting a goatee, earring, and a beautifully done tattoo of a dragonfly on his arm, he looks more like a bouncer at a rock concert than a field ecologist. The decision to exclose the nest that Brian found earlier is quick. Execution involves retrieving exclosure materials from an abandoned nest site further down the beach, and a trip back to the barn for tools. They decide to remove another exclosure at an abandoned nest about 50 feet from the new nest at the same time.

Each team member knows exactly what they are going to do before they go inside the symbolic fence. This time, they huddle and form a game plan that includes simultaneous removal of the second exclosure. They must complete their work in less than 30 minutes so as not to endanger the eggs.

They walk swiftly toward the nest, carrying wire mesh, netting, posts and tools. The plovers leave. Jenna, after dropping the tools at the new exclosure site, moves to the old one, unhooks the top netting mesh from wire mesh, then the mesh from the posts. Meanwhile, Chris and Brian drive three metal fence posts into the sand to form each corner of the exclosure, plus one in the middle of each side. To prevent predators like skunks from burrowing under the mesh, they dig a foot-deep trench to bury the bottom of the mesh in the sand. Jenna moves back to the new site helping to anchor the mesh in the sand, while Chris moves to the old site, uprooting the posts.

Chris finds a dead adult plover inside the now dismantled exclosure. He puts it aside and continues working, then returns to the new site to help spread the top netting. They collect the tools and materials from the old exclosure and leave the nest area. Back outside the symbolic fence they are all breathing hard. Jenna checks her watch - 25 minutes.

Tools and materials back in the truck, the dead adult is examined. Beheaded. This is the second dead adult they have found inside an exclosure this year. A missing head suggests predation by an owl, but the exclosure was top netted. In the other dead adult case, there were unidentified tracks inside the exclosure. Jenna has made a drawing of the tracks, but they have yet to identify the predator, or predators. If they do, and devise a countermeasure, they risk investing effort only to find that this predator may be a temporary threat, like the migrating kestrels were. They wonder if the exclosure in combination with this predator is a death sentence for the nesting birds. They may have to consider not exclosing a nest since a breeding pair is more valuable, in the long run, than a clutch of eggs.

Brian and Jenna watch the exclosure through binoculars from the truck's cab. Chris, elbows braced on the truck, also watches.

No one moves,
no one talks.

They are waiting to see if the plover pair return to the nest. The pair is sighted, running back and forth along the far side of the exclosure. When they take the binoculars away from their faces, they reveal worried looks. Six minutes pass. A successful nest exclosing usually results in the birds returning in about five minutes. They talk quietly, deciding to move themselves and the truck out of sight of the nest. They will know if the birds returned to the nest on tomorrow morning's census.