A couple of days before Christmas I received a call that made me drop the wrapping paper, abandon the Christmas lists and head to a beach at Phillip Island – Hooded Plover chicks had hatched! For the past few years I’ve been hoping to document the journey of a family of hoodie chicks from hatching to fledging.
Hooded Plover nest
Canon 7DII, 1/400, f/18, ISO 400
Let’s start at the beginning, hoodie nests are hard to find, even when you’re standing just a couple of metres from one. There is a nest in the image above but even though I’ve narrowed the area down dramatically it’s still not easy to spot. It would be easy to step on it accidentally, or for a dog to step on it accidentally, or for a fat-bike rider to crush it, accidentally.
It was a miracle that the chicks I was rushing to see had hatched, the ranger mentioned that he’d seen footprints all around the nest, despite the symbolic ‘protective’ fencing urging people to ‘Keep Clear’ and to walk along water’s edge.
Hooded Plover eggs
Canon 7D, 1/1000, f/8, ISO 100
Here’s a close up of a nest I took a while ago while helping to put up protective fencing. The mottled eggs are tiny, like large marbles, and even though the ranger pointed at the nest it took me quite a while to see it.
Adult Hooded Plover (Thinornis rubricollis rubricollis) with a day old chick
Canon 5DIII, 1/1250, f/6.3, ISO 400
My first glimpse of one of the new chicks was seeing it snuggled against a parent bird, a tiny fluffy bundle that has to forage for itself from the time it hatched. Yep, that’s right, they forage for themselves from the very beginning. They don’t have the luxury of sitting in a nest waiting for food to be brought to them, instead they need to get to the water’s edge and hunt for the tiny arthropods and other critters that make up their diet. That is remarkable, truly remarkable, and fraught with many dangers.
Hooded Plover family (Thinornis rubricollis rubricollis) – two-day old chicks
Canon 5DIII, 1/1000, f/8, ISO 400
I have many images of Hooded Plovers that are better than this one but this post is about this family and this was the clearest image I managed to capture of them as a group. The parent birds are remarkable too. Over the Christmas period holiday-makers pepper the beach, walking, jogging, paddling, swimming, with their children, their buckets and spades, their fishing rods, their kites, their dogs and now the added concern of fat-bikes – the hoodie parents react to all of these disturbances with concern. They need to get to the water’s edge to forage but they can’t risk being stranded there when people, dogs or bikes turn up. So they are wary, super wary. They stay in the dunes, watching the beach users and keeping their babies stashed and hidden, and unable to seek shelter or forage.
The hatchlings aren’t able to fly for 35 long days, during that time they are incredibly vulnerable.
Adult Hooded Plover (Thinornis rubricollis rubricollis) with two-day old chick
Canon 5DIII, 1/1000, f/10, ISO 400
I was a long way from the hoodies, hidden beneath a fabric hide, when I took the heavily cropped image above. What tiny wings and exquisite markings, what a little beauty.
Hidden three-day old Hooded Plover chick
Canon 5DIII, 1/1000, f/10, ISO 400
Often the chicks hide by flattening themselves against the sand where they blend perfectly with the background and are virtually impossible to see. Sometimes they hide among the tiny plants at the edge of the dunes. The chick above is looking at you, can you see it? Would you know where it’s safe to tread?
Adult Hooded Plover with three three-day old chicks
Canon 5DIII, 1/1600, f/7.1, ISO 800
In the image above all three little chicks are near the parent bird, one is nestled beneath the adult on the right-hand side. The structure on the left is a hoodie shelter that was specially made by local primary school students.
I spoke with dozens of people on the beach and a few of them were lucky enough to see the chicks; it was lovely to see the delight on their faces when they spotted the tiny bundles of fluffiness. Most didn’t see the chicks, or even the adult birds. The adult birds will sometimes respond to a threat with ‘leading’ behaviour by running along the water’s edge, pretending to forage in order to lead the threat away. Sue (a Hoodie Watch Volunteer) and I watched the parent birds running along just in front of a pair of joggers, anxiously leading the joggers away from their hidden babies. The adult hoodies flew when the joggers were just a few metres from them and the fascinating thing is that at no point did the joggers notice the hoodies, not even when they took flight. And yet the handful of people who believe their dogs should be allowed to run off-lead, and the fat-bike riders (and the officials who approved their use on hoodie beaches) somehow believe they’d be able to see the hidden babies.
Adult Hooded Plover with two eleven-day old chicks
Canon 5DIII, 1/1600, f/7.1, ISO 400
One of the three chicks went missing at the end of its first week. We’re not sure what happened but there was a crazy amount of disturbance on the beach and the hoodies were unable to get to the water’s edge as often as they should have. They often run out of the symbolically ‘protective’ fencing but on one of the days they ran a long way and settled near some rocks at the far end of the beach where there were numerous people and dogs. We were very worried for them. The wonderful volunteers quickly erected ropes around the area to let people know. If only the hoodies could read they’d know to stay in the area sectioned off by the ropes, but those areas are not large enough. It’s sad when fat-bike riders hop straight back on their bikes at the end of the ropes, which is what has been recommended, but which won’t help the hoodies if they’ve ventured beyond the refuge, which off course they often do as they need several hundred metres of beach in order to survive. If chicks are stashed directly in front of joggers there’s about a 25% chance that a chick will be crushed; if they are stashed directly in front of a fat-bike (so called because of the extra wide tyres) there’s a 100% chance that a chick will be crushed.
Hooded Plover chick from an earlier clutch on a different island beach
Canon 5DII, 1/1250, f/6.3, ISO 400
Another chick went missing half way through its second week.
People were seen taking short-cuts through the middle of the refuge to get to the pathway. Dogs were seen on the beach outside of the permitted 6 hours per day, dogs were seen off-leash which is not permitted at any time around the refuge. People set up camp in front of the refuge, spreading their towels, setting up their fishing rods, ambling around the rock pools – and the volunteers patiently reminded them to keep the area clear, to put their dogs on-lead, to leave the area available for the hoodies to forage – and virtually everyone was grateful for the advice.
And then came the morning when no chick was visible. The parents were behaving as though it was still there, looking towards the dunes where we hoped the chick was stashed, but we didn’t see it. We didn’t see it in the afternoon either, or the evening, or the following morning. And then the adult birds flew around the point and we knew that the third chick had not survived. The adult birds had worked so hard to raise their babies. For their four weeks of incubating the eggs, including running down to the water on hot days to dampen their tummy feathers to keep the eggs at a safe temperature, and for their two weeks of assiduously guarding their babies they had nothing to show for it. And those three little chicks lost the chance to help their species to survive in a world that continually adds more dangers.
Masked Lapwing
Canon 5DIII, 1/400, f/5.6, ISO 1600
During the chicks’ short lives I spoke with dozens of people on the beach, most of them were delightful. Several were surprised to realise we were helping protect tiny Hooded Plovers rather than the larger Masked Lapwing (aka the Spur-winged Plover) pictured above. Masked Lapwings are much larger birds which are often seen around the island. I guess it’s easier to imagine these are the birds being protected rather than the ‘invisible’ birds that take more effort to see. Lapwings often visit the beaches and can be seen around the Hooded Plover refuges but they prefer to set up their nests in the middle of mown, grassy areas. Their hatchlings also need to feed themselves within a few hours of hatching but unlike the gentle hoodies the lapwings vigorously defend their downy babies by swooping people and potential predators. They are noisy birds with a loud ‘kekekekekekekekek’ call that they often make in flight, and even at night, whereas the hoodies use a quiet ‘peep’ that is difficult to hear unless the beach is deserted and the water is calm.
Many beach goers went out of their way to walk on the pathway behind the beach so as not to disturb the hoodies, thank you. Many turned around and walked back the way they’d come rather than risk keeping the birds from the water’s edge, thank you. One raced along the beach to let people with off-lead dogs know to use a leash in the area, thank you. Many expressed great concern that more isn’t being done to help the hoodies, and many were especially concerned that people are allowed to have dogs in the refuge area at all, thank you. At least one wrote to the Bass Coast Shire Council asking for more to be done to protect the hoodies, thank you.
The Federal Government recently categorised Phillip Island’s Hooded Plovers as ‘endangered’. There are currently 17 pairs on the island and between them this breeding season they have created 34 nests and laid 77 eggs. Of those eggs only 29 have survived long enough to hatch, of the 29 chicks only 6 have fledged. Some of the losses may have been caused by natural predators such as ravens, gulls or raptors but even those losses have a potential human component; the numbers of ravens and gulls on the island has increased in-line with the number of people. And, more importantly, the little hoodies can’t hope to protect their chicks from all dangers so while they’re anxiously monitoring the people and dogs on the beach it’s harder for them to keep an eye on predators in the sky – the poor birds must be exhausted.
A similar species in the United States, the Piping Plover, gets priority treatment during the breeding season. I searched for ‘piping plover beach closure’ and randomly chose a site which talked about the 7 miles (11 km) of beach that is closed to vehicles (including bikes?), pets and kites from March to September, right through the northern summer. Wow. Even closing 500m stretches of hoodie beaches to bikes, pets and kites (which the hoodies presume are raptors), once a nesting site has been established, would give our hoodies a chance to successfully raise their clutches.
I’ve written this post now in the hope that we can help protect the eight nests currently active on the island, and any hoodie nests in other areas of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. Please spread the word and be mindful if you are visiting hoodie beaches, and carefully follow advice given on signage or by the awesome volunteers, rangers and by-laws officers . If you’d like to join the team and help the hoodies contact me at kim@lirralirra.com and I will pass your details to Sue. Even if you only have a few hours to spare they could be the critical hours that make a difference.
Happy birding, Kim
PS If you’d like to see clearer images of beautiful hoodie chicks that survived long enough to fledge check out In love with hoodie chicks and Hooded Plover chicks
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