- Published on
By Paula Street
THE hoodie season starts in August with an annual preseason debrief and update with all the volunteers and associated organisations. It’s always a buzz to catch up with the tribe.
Then out we go checking all our breeding sites with great enthusiasm, looking for which hoodies are pairing up this season. Usually the same pair claim the same territory each year, but sometimes there are new pairs when old ones simply don’t return.
By September we are looking for nesting behaviour and the first eggs, always a bit of excitement. Eggs are so well camouflaged and just sit in a “scrape” in the sand – easy to miss and takes a bit of training to know how to find them.
THE hoodie season starts in August with an annual preseason debrief and update with all the volunteers and associated organisations. It’s always a buzz to catch up with the tribe.
Then out we go checking all our breeding sites with great enthusiasm, looking for which hoodies are pairing up this season. Usually the same pair claim the same territory each year, but sometimes there are new pairs when old ones simply don’t return.
By September we are looking for nesting behaviour and the first eggs, always a bit of excitement. Eggs are so well camouflaged and just sit in a “scrape” in the sand – easy to miss and takes a bit of training to know how to find them.
So what’s involved in monitoring? Every year is different, and while there are many hours of hard work and many disappointments, there is always a special one that surprises us. I will describe my favourite one this year …
The Mouth of the Powlett is one of the most popular areas on the Bass Coast. Summertime is super busy, so much so that there has not been a successful breeding pair there for eight years.
This year I noted we had a new pair of adults. Interesting, and hard to know where they were from as neither of the pair had ID tags. I didn’t hold out much hope. On Dec 19th there was some mating behaviour noted, and some scrapes right on the west bank sandy spit. Later site visits did not detect any hoodies around, let alone a nest with eggs, just lots of human, dog, fox, gull and raven prints all over the beach. No surprises there.
However on January 19 a nest with three perfect eggs was sighted. What?! And the new pair were diligently incubating and guarding the nest, with plenty of people walking past. We set to and located our stashes of signs, posts and rope up in the dunes and quickly put up a large, roped fence around the nest and four nest signs at each of the access points to the sandy spit.
With the long weekend coming up we again feared it might all be in vain, but we always try and give these vulnerable little birds the best chance we can. We had no idea how long the nest had been there, so could not accurately predict its hatching date.
The day after the long weekend we went down again and cautiously checked the nest. Just one egg that looked abandoned. Ho hum … disappointment again. We could see the new pair of hoodies up on a sandy ridge westward, running around. Unusual after they lose a nest. Then suddenly on the crest of the ridge we saw what the parents were running after – a chick that looked almost a week old!
We put up chick signs and checked regularly, always entering data on the Birdlife Australia Hoodie portal after each visit. Somehow this cheeky little chick was surviving very nicely. It takes five weeks for a chick to fledge and as fledging time came close, I would often just sit and observe where I knew they were located amongst the seaweed and up on the dune. Those parents guarded that chick so beautifully, little calls for it to hide whenever any threats came close. Dare we start to think this chick might make it?
The weekend before fledging date it was very warm, lots of beach goers, so I put up extra chick signage and watched a while. Well my heart missed a beat as I witnessed the chick make a short low flight down to the water’s edge with its parents. Now I was really excited.
Fledging was due on the Labour day long weekend and warm weather was predicted again. Sunday, March 8, parents and chick still there. Monday March 9 the banding team arrived. We do not know how it happened, but everyone was stunned to find not just one robust chick, but TWO!! They were caught, checked, measured, and duly banded Green LB and DH. Our brand new Mouth of Powlett West Bank fledges were then released and free to fly.
Woo hoo! Moments like this make it all worthwhile.
The Mouth of the Powlett is one of the most popular areas on the Bass Coast. Summertime is super busy, so much so that there has not been a successful breeding pair there for eight years.
This year I noted we had a new pair of adults. Interesting, and hard to know where they were from as neither of the pair had ID tags. I didn’t hold out much hope. On Dec 19th there was some mating behaviour noted, and some scrapes right on the west bank sandy spit. Later site visits did not detect any hoodies around, let alone a nest with eggs, just lots of human, dog, fox, gull and raven prints all over the beach. No surprises there.
However on January 19 a nest with three perfect eggs was sighted. What?! And the new pair were diligently incubating and guarding the nest, with plenty of people walking past. We set to and located our stashes of signs, posts and rope up in the dunes and quickly put up a large, roped fence around the nest and four nest signs at each of the access points to the sandy spit.
With the long weekend coming up we again feared it might all be in vain, but we always try and give these vulnerable little birds the best chance we can. We had no idea how long the nest had been there, so could not accurately predict its hatching date.
The day after the long weekend we went down again and cautiously checked the nest. Just one egg that looked abandoned. Ho hum … disappointment again. We could see the new pair of hoodies up on a sandy ridge westward, running around. Unusual after they lose a nest. Then suddenly on the crest of the ridge we saw what the parents were running after – a chick that looked almost a week old!
We put up chick signs and checked regularly, always entering data on the Birdlife Australia Hoodie portal after each visit. Somehow this cheeky little chick was surviving very nicely. It takes five weeks for a chick to fledge and as fledging time came close, I would often just sit and observe where I knew they were located amongst the seaweed and up on the dune. Those parents guarded that chick so beautifully, little calls for it to hide whenever any threats came close. Dare we start to think this chick might make it?
The weekend before fledging date it was very warm, lots of beach goers, so I put up extra chick signage and watched a while. Well my heart missed a beat as I witnessed the chick make a short low flight down to the water’s edge with its parents. Now I was really excited.
Fledging was due on the Labour day long weekend and warm weather was predicted again. Sunday, March 8, parents and chick still there. Monday March 9 the banding team arrived. We do not know how it happened, but everyone was stunned to find not just one robust chick, but TWO!! They were caught, checked, measured, and duly banded Green LB and DH. Our brand new Mouth of Powlett West Bank fledges were then released and free to fly.
Woo hoo! Moments like this make it all worthwhile.
Desal beach chicks at three weeks old
Kilcunda trestle bridge fledge, newly banded
To summarise the season for the San Remo to Williamsons West breeding sites, our total count was at least 50 eggs from 10 pairs, with 10 eggs hatching and 6 reaching fledging age, five of them banded.
This is above average success rate for Hooded Plovers, so we are well pleased with our monitoring efforts and all the public who supported us. Now it’s time to gather up all the signs and roped fences, replenish our stashes, and look forward to the end of season debrief when the tribe get together again and share hoodie stories.
Until next August …
Paula Street is a Birdlife Australia volunteer on the beach from San Remo to Williamsons Beach West (Wonthaggi). All photos taken according to Birdlife Australia guidelines.
This is above average success rate for Hooded Plovers, so we are well pleased with our monitoring efforts and all the public who supported us. Now it’s time to gather up all the signs and roped fences, replenish our stashes, and look forward to the end of season debrief when the tribe get together again and share hoodie stories.
Until next August …
Paula Street is a Birdlife Australia volunteer on the beach from San Remo to Williamsons Beach West (Wonthaggi). All photos taken according to Birdlife Australia guidelines.
Banding by Viv Grace (Phillip Island Nature Parks), Steve Johnson and Janine Thomas at the desal beach where a seasoned pair produced three beautiful fledges. It made up for last year when they were unsuccessful. Photo: Jennifer Brown
Continue your good work, volunteers. It may not always feel like it, but you do make a difference.