Honolulu Star-Advertiser © Susan Scott
May 3, 1999
Last week, I wrote about Hawaii’s Pacific golden plovers. The story was about how Montana researchers Wally and Pat Johnson are trying to learn more about these migratory shorebirds by banding and attaching radio tags to them.
The birds (and the Johnsons) have migrated north by now, but I can’t let the subject go just yet. These little shorebirds, and the people who love them, generate too many good stories.
One of my favorites, told by the Johnsons, is about a plover at Johnston Island, which a few months ago was seen walking around with a fishing line hanging from its mouth.
It wasn’t hard to find this bird because people at Johnston feed the shorebirds there daily. The birds anticipate this, and at a certain time each afternoon, they begin flocking around the feeding area.
Anyway, seeing that hooked plover bothered the Johnston bird lovers, so they captured it and took it to the clinic. There, the doctor shot an X-ray.
But the news was bad: The hook was so deep inside the bird’s body, it couldn’t be removed. Sadly, the rescuers snipped the trailing line, put ID bands on the bird’s legs, and turned it loose.
Though they feared the worst, the plover has been seen behaving and feeding normally.
Another story I once heard was about a man who found a plover with one of its legs severely injured. The man amputated the mangled limb and turned the bird loose. That plover survived for years, hopping around the man’s yard each winter on one leg.
Speaking of survival, while I was at Bellows, the Johnsons introduced me to two of their oldest bird friends. One is #63, a male plover that will be 19 years old this July. The other is a female who will have survived 18 years this summer. No one knows how long plovers live, but these two birds are helping the Johnsons find out.
A reader wrote to ask if our plovers are the same as the ones on the mainland. The answer is no, the two are different species. Ours is the Pacific golden plover; the other is the American golden plover, which migrates to South America.
Interestingly, the American species hasn’t adapted to human settlement like ours have. The Johnsons were in Argentina last January and found researchers there amazed when they described how our plovers gather for handouts and spend winters in yards and parks with high human traffic.
The American species is quite skittish, steering clear of farms and settlements. As more of these plovers’ wintering grounds are taken by people, this shyness is likely to hurt the birds’ chances of survival. It’s a good thing our plovers don’t mind sharing.
Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say they tolerate our presence. One Hawaii reader wrote about several plovers that spend each winter on his lawn. If he gets too close, they scold him by issuing loud warning calls. At night, these birds sleep on a rooftop facing his bedroom window.
After four years, these birds have become the man’s special friends. The reader lobs stones at stray cats with a slingshot to protect his feathered buddies and wonders if there is anything else he can do to help the birds while they’re here.
Keeping cats away from the area is probably the best thing people can do for their plovers. As for feeding, some birds will eat offered food, but they don’t need it here on the main islands. Plovers eat large numbers of alien invertebrates, plentiful on the main islands. This includes spiders, cockroaches, centipedes and more.
So let your birds eat bugs. And when they come back in August, give them plenty of space — or you’ll hear about it.