Banded Dotterels (tuturiwhatu), G7, 100-400

hindesite wrote:

Our dotterels are back. I have really mixed feelings about this.

These are the declining Banded Dotterel (Tuturiwhatu) which NZ wide has a declining population of under 50,000 birds. This is a quite different situation from the state of the New Zealand Dotterel population.

I posted a quite nice image from the end of the last season: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4356903

The birds left shortly after I took those photos but I doubt the chicks survived - being so close to a residential area they will almost certainly have been killed by domestic cats.

And this season, those birds closest to residential areas are already suffering - recently one cat may have killed 5 birds (there were only 9 at the nesting site). Yet thoughtless people think it is cute to take their cats down to the beach to watch the sunset which habituates cats into visiting the beach.

Dogs are also perceived as a problem, but while it often looks like a dog is chasing the birds, in reality, the birds are usually leading the dog away from the nest. Dog owners seem unaware that they can be prosecuted for allowing the dogs to chase dotterels.

Even the birds that are far away from residential areas are threatened - some breed on a very exposed gravel coastal dune area, which has lots of driftwood; hedgehogs come down to the beach to forage for insects under the rotting wood, and also predate on the dotterel eggs if available.

And well intentioned people cause a lot of damage - for example, one well meaning neighbour daily walks all over the beach with her dog off lead, picking up rubbish. She would never even see a dotterel nest even if she walked through one.

This year it seems the most successful nesting area is the one furthest from our village, so last Sunday afternoon I threw the G7 and 100-400 and a monopod into a small backpack and cycled (into a strong headwind) about 45min down the coastal gravel road.

These guys are hard to see, you generally have to sit for quite a while until you spot them. They are quite territorial so they are most often visible while chasing each other.

A rahui has been put in place to prevent people from entering the nesting area, and with some fencing this may help a little. There is a fairly active team of volunteers monitoring and trapping.

I like m4/3 because it is so lightweight - the equivalent gear in FF would both cost more and not fit in a small backpack, and for this kind of casual bird photography the G7 and 100-400 is a great combination, even though the bokeh on the 100-400 tends to be a bit harsh (if not downright weird in some situations).

Anyway - these guys are very cute.

Thanks for your update on the Banded Dotterel and their plight.  I grew up in NZ where almost every household had a cat, many two.  Now living in Australia for 40 years I've seen what they can do to wild fauna, am heartened at the improving attitude in Australia to cat's destructive impact but continue to wonder why things don't appear to have changed in NZ. Or have they?