IT is only several miles off the tip of Long Island’s north fork, but Great Gull Island seems to be the middle of nowhere.

Signs on this tiny outcropping shout “Research Station, Do Not Land.” More threatening still are the thousands of floppy-flying white birds that protect the island by divebombing visitors.

But then there is the smiling woman waving from the end of a high, narrow pier. This is Helen Hays, who began coming to Great Gull in the mid-1960s to study whether its decimated tern population could be revived.

To cut to the chase, it has been, thanks largely to Ms. Hays, who since 1969 has lived on the island six months a year. As chairwoman of the Great Gull Island Project for the American Museum of Natural History, which owns the island, Ms. Hays leads a group of ornithologists and volunteers that improves nesting conditions and monitors the populations.