Did you know the banded dotterel is as vulnerable as the great spotted kiwi?

Monday, 8 January 2018

It's as vulnerable as the great spotted kiwi, but gets nowhere near the same attention.

The banded dotterel is in the same boat as the great spotted kiwi – nationally vulnerable, with a population predicted to decline 30-70 per cent over 10 years or three generations, whichever is longer. But this peculiar little bird is another of New Zealand's forgotten species, writes GED CANN.

Only one fledgling has emerged this season from the 32 known banded dotterel nests on the Kaikōura Peninsula, according to Forest & Bird branch chairwoman Ailsa Howard.

All the rest were predated by cats or hedgehogs, or swept away by an ever-more erratic sea.

The banded dotterel's numbers in New Zealand are estimated to have fallen from 50,000 to 19,000 in recent years.

The stories flew under the radar, while those about the ōkārito and northern brown kiwi having their endangered status reduced left New Zealanders feeling they were doing a good job for their native species.

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Banded dotterel chicks are particularly vulnerable to mammalian predators, such as cats and hedgehogs.

Meanwhile, every year, the estimated 20,000 breeding adult banded dotterels are falling. They are not alone.

Outside the spotlight, more than 900 native species are approaching extinction and 2800 are declining. According to a recent report from former parliamentary commissioner for the environment Jan Wright, eight out of 10 native birds are currently threatened.

But a Lincoln University survey showed 70 per cent of the public felt the state of the country's native plants, animals and fish was adequate or doing well last year.

Research co-author Ross Cullen describes this perception as 'totally wrong', and says the misunderstanding probably boils down to a focus on a dozen or so 'charismatic species', such as tui and kiwi.

It's no wonder the plight of a small bird that likes to stay hidden on our coasts has gone unnoticed.

Ailsa Howard monitors an area of South Bay beach, Kaikōura, for banded dotterel. (File photo)

Howard has been studying the dotterel for three years along the Kaikōura Peninsula, and says numbers are believed to have decreased nationally from 50,000 to 19,000 in recent years – a reduction of almost two-thirds.

Dotterel numbers are falling because they have evolved to protect themselves only from other birds, and haven't learned to cope with mammalian predators.

Banded dotterel parents protect their nests well from other birds, but are less successful against mammals.

'They are incredibly artful in the art of deceit. They are incredible to watch because their behaviours are evolved to deceive other birds,' Howard says.

'They are incredibly entertaining in the way they lead you away from the nest, and the way adult pairs act as a team.

'They might pretend to nest somewhere else, and they do a lot of broken wing dancing.'

The banded dotterel, or tūturiwhatu, is slightly larger than a blackbird, and nests in braided rivers and on shorelines.

Howard says it is incredible to watch the males distract unwanted visitors, while females sneak back to the nest.

'They are amazingly courageous. They would fly at a cat, they fly at gulls, they sometimes fly at people. These tiny things – you will sometimes see them chasing gulls down the beach.'

Like many of the country's native birds, the banded dotterel used to exist in massive quantities.

'People can't get their heads around that they're suddenly becoming endangered, because their reproduction is so sensitive to mammal predation.

'When they are sitting on eggs, the birds are strongly territorial.'

The birds also contend with increasingly irregular tides, and Howard says every year nests are washed away.

'I have some guys who are on their fourth nest at the moment. I guess the birds have evolved to repeat nests to get some chicks away.'

Howard criticises the previous government for a lack of interest in conservation.

'They put money into a few highly critical projects, in other words where the animal they were trying to protect was so endangered the gene pool barely had enough variety in it to resuscitate the species.

'In other words they have had these critical things like takahē and kōkako and kākāpō, so we have these as poster things for DOC, but what DOC has actually been doing has been very tight-lipped.

'Their effort has been on public perception and tourism infrastructure. They have been really gagged, and that's been for 10 years.'