Auckland NZ dotterel minders newsletter #15

Issue #15 September 2019

The breeding season is here, with reports coming in of brightly coloured-up birds paired up and defending territories. We have had our first report of chicks from the team at Massey North. Please get in touch with us if you need any advice, assistance or materials such as signage or fencing supplies to assist you with nest monitoring and management. Please also get in touch if you are interested in doing pest control at your site or would like to be connected with others doing pest control in your area.

Results for the 2018/19 breeding season

Thanks to everyone who submitted their breeding reports to us for last season. We received breeding reports for 29 sites. 82 pairs of dotterel were monitored across these sites, and from these 60 chicks were observed to fledge, giving us a productivity of 0.73 fledged chicks per pair. This is pretty close to the average annual productivity we have observed over the last nine years.

Dotterel Forum 2019

The 2019 Auckland dotterel forum was held at Ambury Regional Park in April. Thanks to everyone who attended and especially to our presenters John Stewart, Lesley and Richard Gardner, Beckie Trigg, Alison Staines, Marie Ward and guest speaker John Dowding.

John Dowding gave a presentation on the distribution and numbers of northern NZ dotterel looking at the past, present and future. He spoke about the increase in the northern NZ dotterel population over the last 30 years, emphasising that management programmes and the work of all of you out there looking after these birds has contributed to the successive population increases seen. Northern NZ dotterel really are a conservation success story that would not have been possible without a collective effort! Although their threat status has improved to At Risk: Recovering, they do remain conservation dependent - meaning that current conservation efforts and threat management needs to continue to maintain their population and to support their on-going recovery.

Minders create tracking guide

Two dotterel minders who met through the Auckland NZ Dotterel Forum - Shaun Lee (Point England) and Jordi Tablada (Piha) have teamed up to create http://nztracker.org The website can help you identify which birds and predators have been leaving footprints on your beach. Jordi and Shaun hope the website will help with your management decisions. The website attracted some media attention with a great article on Newsroom.

Observations

Jan Velvin reports that the dotterel chick that fledged on Tiritiri Matangi in the summer of 2015/16 with the white engraved leg flag 'CHZ' has been observed at Shakespear Open Sanctuary. For over a year now it has been occasionally seen foraging at Okoromai Bay. Over the last two months it has been a consistent visitor to Te Haruhi Beach AND in the company of a highly coloured-up bird!

CHZ has remained fairly local, but in contrast a white flagged bird 'CLH,' who was banded as a chick in Piha in January 2018, has been observed around the Whitford and east Auckland area. Another of Jordi Tablada's Piha chicks (flagged CHR during the 2018/19 season) was sighted at Manukapua on the Kaipara Harbour recently.

Over the last couple of months a dotterel with the colour bands OR-GR has been regularly observed at Sullivan's Bay, Mahurangi Regional Park. John Dowding has shared that OR-GR was banded as a chick (one of three siblings) at Jones Bay, Tawharanui Open Sanctuary in November 2010. It was seen at Omaha in early 2011, then Waiwera later in 2011, then Sullivan's Bay in November 2012. It was reported several times there until 2014, when it seemed to disappear. It appears to be paired up ready for the 2019/20 breeding season. Good to have it back on the radar after five years.

REMINDER: Please report any coloured leg BANDS on northern NZ dotterel to John Dowding (jdowding@xtra.co.nz) and any engraved leg FLAGS to Adrian Riegen (riegen@xtra.co.nz).

If you have any interesting NZ dotterel observations or photos you would like to share with the group, please send them through to us for the next issue.

Caps and vests

The idea of some form of branded clothing was suggested by attendees at the 2018 dotterel forum to help dotterel minders be identified when they are fencing nests, erecting signs or educating members of the public about the work they are doing. In response to this we had caps and hi-vis vests designed for us by Shaun Lee. The caps seemed to be particularly popular and were all snapped up at the forum. There are still a few vests available. Please get in touch if you would like a vest or let us know if you missed out on a cap - if there is enough interest we will get more produced.

Farewell to Ben

In August Ben Paris left Auckland Council to take up a new role as Community Conservation Manager at Auckland Zoo. Ben was instrumental in initiating and developing how Auckland Council supports dotterel conservation in greater Auckland. We'd like to acknowledge all the work he has done, much of it behind the scenes, advocating for shorebird protection and supporting this community of dotterel minders. He is going to be very much missed (but we are hoping he might still be able to be involved in shorebird conservation in his new role).

Ben passes on his thanks to all of those he has worked with during his time at council and that working with the dotterel minders group was one of the most rewarding aspects of his role.