The piping plover often nests with a colony of least terns. Incubation by both sexes begins with the laying of the fourth egg and takes 25-31 days. The young are precocial and leave the nest shortly after hatching and fledge in about 28-35 days. By early September, all but a few stragglers have departed for their wintering areas. Diet consists principally of marine worms, insect larvae, beetles, crustaceans, mollusks and other small marine animals and their eggs.
Food is obtained by foraging on beaches, dunes and in tidal wrack.
Data on the breeding behavior of piping plovers shows that some adults return to the same nesting area annually and may retain the same mate as well. One recaptured individual on Long Island was 14 years of age. Piping plovers breed on dry sandy beaches or dredged sandfills, often near dunes in areas with little or no beach grass. They occur along the Atlantic Coast from southwestern Newfoundland and southeastern Quebec south to North Carolina, and on inland beaches from eastern Alberta and Nebraska to Lake Ontario. Within New York, this species breeds on Long Island's sandy beaches, from Queens to the Hamptons, in the eastern bays and in the harbors of northern Suffolk County.