Nesting season has begun for piping plovers, and Tashmoo Beach in Tisbury will be closed for the next month to protect a plover nest found Monday on the road leading to the public beach.

The town of Tisbury closed the end of Herring Creek Road and the beach on the recommendation of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary, which monitors shorebirds across the Vineyard. Shorebird monitor Liz Baldwin found the small nest and alerted the Massachusetts Audubon Society sanctuary on Monday.

Sanctuary director Suzan Bellincampi said there are four eggs in the nest located at the end of the road just before the parking lot. Plover eggs have an incubation period that lasts between 26 and 28 days, which means the beach will be closed until at least mid-June.

Plovers have been a federally-listed threatened species since 1986. They nest in many areas around the Vineyard, and wildlife sanctuaries protect the nest through the use of monitors and by building exclosures.

Ms. Bellincampi said the reopening of Tashmoo Beach will depend on where the birds decide to feed after they have hatched. Tiny plovers are precocious and feed independently as soon as they are hatched.

Federal and state law require a protection area of least 100 yards around a plover nest. Tisbury town administrator John Bugbee reported this week that a 300-foot fence had been built around the nest on Monday and signs posted along the road warning of the beach closure.

It was the first plover nest found at Tashmoo this year and the first time the town has had to close the entire beach, Ms. Bellincampi said, noting the unusual spot the birds chose for their nest. Usually they nests in scrapes on sand dunes.

A coastal water bird program monitor will check the nest daily or every other day, Ms. Bellincampi said.

She praised the town and Herring Creek Road residents for their cooperation.

“The landowners have been incredibly cooperative and said do what you need to do . . . Everyone came together and it was nice to see everyone doing what needed to be done,” Ms. Bellincampi said.

The sanctuary is currently monitoring seven plover nests at locations around the Island.

“It’s been a rough spring with the cold, windy, rainy weather we’ve had,” Ms. Bellincampi said.

The Trustees of Reservations Vineyard superintendent Chris Kennedy said heavy rainstorms in the past month have posed a setback to the plover nesting season on Trustees properties.

“We’ve got 13 pairs of plovers that are present, of those eight of them have established nests and seven of those nests have been exclosed,” Mr. Kennedy said. “We still have five pairs that are still looking at nest sites, and they may or may not nest.”

There are currently three nests on the Edgartown side of Norton Point, five nests at Leland Beach and the rest are scattered along Cape Pogue. Mr. Kennedy said this is a normal number. But the biggest test of the season will be to see how many chicks hatch.

“What the state and federal governments say is ideally to be successful in recovering the species we need to see 1.5 chicks per nest,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Last year we were 1.68 so we’re slightly about that threshold that the state and federal governments are looking for.”

Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation executive director Adam Moore said there are no plover nests on Sheriff’s Meadow properties yet.