Environment – Defending our dotterels

There are only about 2500 endemic New Zealand northern dotterel/tūturiwhatu. They feed and nest on our sandy shores, with adults weighing only about 146 grams. Like their habitat, they are under pressure, so every life matters.

Through the deep of night, in rain, wind and storms, from dogs, cats and other predators, from the ignorant, careless and arrogant, hardy dotterel minders defend little tūturiwhatu against the odds. Sometimes they beat the odds, but sometimes the odds beat the dotterels.

So, at beautiful Waiwera spit (and elsewhere) over summer, dotterel minders have inspired and conspired to keep little eggs and chicks safe. Dotterel minders have fortified nests against storms and random high tides. They’ve retrieved apparently lost eggs from a mass of sea foam and just guessed which nests they were washed out from. The cold eggs looked abandoned, and the breeding season bereft.

But amazingly, two dotterels hatched, a week or so apart. Little balls of fluff were nurtured by their parents as roaming cats cased the spit, wandering fisherfolk separated the chicks from their parents, and some locals thought that it was their right to wander through the breeding ground. The birds got separated by the high tide from their normal dry land resting spot, but the little chicks, with no webbed feet, swam against the current with their parents to safety.

Dotterel minders reported beautifully while on sentry duties – the light on the forest on the opposite bank, the sunset on iconic Mahurangi Island at the mouth of the Waiwera estuary, nighttime incursions of those cats and dogs, paw prints, the bravery of the parents and chicks.

But at two weeks old, after much dedication and diligence from the Waiwera dotterel minders, and the dotterel parents, number one dotterel chick disappeared. Lost perhaps to a black-backed gull, one of several extra attracted to the area by a picnicker’s discarded burger and chips.

At this point, number two chick, an amazing survivor of an abandoned, flooded nest, is still alive, still monitored by the roster of dotterel defenders. Two oystercatcher chicks who also survived the same travails, also remain.

At Big Manly and Tindalls Beach, there have been no surviving dotterel chicks, as dotterels and oystercatchers have been predated and disturbed by beachgoers, pets and pests. At Snells Beach, dotterels have done relatively better this year, with five dotterel chicks successfully fledged, despite wandering cats and risky human behaviour. At Piha, on Auckland’s west coast, a fledged chick was killed by a dog, and at Waihi Beach, nests were deliberately trampled and eggs were smashed.
Dotterels are rarer than kiwi. It’s time Kiwis took more care of dotterels, with the Waiwera dotterel minders (and others) showing us the way. We might not beat nature (gulls!) but we have to learn not to be her enemy and to defend dotterels for the future.