Pip the dotterel was rescued as an egg by Tūtūkākā local Dave Gould.
Pip the dotterel was rescued as an egg by Tūtūkākā local Dave Gould.
A Tūtūkākā Coast local has found himself thrust into the world of parenthood - but with a twist - after rescuing a dotterel egg about to be washed away in a storm.
Dave Gould first became aware of the egg after noticing its parents nesting at Sandy Bay just north of the toilet block, very close to the stream.
He kept the egg safe by placing timber pegs around the area to rope it off, and placed a “bird nesting” sign. He was able to watch the nesting parents from his house.
On the evening of December 7, a wild storm descended upon Sandy Bay. Gould raced to check on the egg, just as a large wave crashed onto the beach and washed it into the stream.
Gould said the dotterel parents were “frantic” as their egg was swept away.
He made the decision to rescue the egg and take it to the safety of his home out of the wind and rain, especially as its parents were no longer nesting with it.
“What are you supposed to do? You think, ‘Well, what do I do now? The thing will be buggered’,” Gould said.
In lieu of a hot water cupboard, he placed the egg on top of his coffee machine to keep it warm.
The egg which was delicately cared for by Dave Gould.
But the next morning, to Gould’s horror, he discovered the coffee machine had switched off overnight and the egg had cooled.
The egg spent the next two days wrapped up in Gould’s bed with the electric blanket on. He constantly monitored the temperature.
On December 9, Gould’s good friend Suzie Scourfield, who happened to be head of science at Whangārei Girls’ High School, provided an incubator and heat plate on loan from the school.
The egg then spent the next 18 days under constant temperature and humidity monitoring.
During this time, Gould contacted Auckland Zoo to see if they wanted to take the egg on, which they declined. He contacted the Department of Conservation, who told him to bury the egg as the chances of survival were slim and, even if it did hatch, raising it and releasing it would be a difficult task.
“I decided to ignore their advice.”
Robert Webb, of the Whangārei Native Bird Recovery Centre, told Gould to place a string of spaghetti on the egg, and if the end of it moved, the chick was alive.
“I thought, ‘Oh my god, that’s alive in there’,” he said.
Gould was “over the moon” when, during the last 10 days of incubation, there was some slight movement of the egg. At one point he even heard chirping coming from inside.
Then on December 27, Pip the dotterel finally hatched. It spent its first day Earth-side in the incubator, where it dried out and “fluffed up” before moving to a large box with a heat pack to keep warm.
By the second day, Pip was running around, eating and drinking, Gould said.
Pip was then dining on seafood such as oysters, mussels and tuatua gathered by Gould from Sandy Bay, but now eats a range of foods including shellfish, finely-grated cooked meat, chicken-based pet food, grated carrot, spiders, flies or bugs Gould catches.
Even though raising Pip takes up half of his time, he called it a “bundle of joy” that was “quite smart and incredibly quick at picking things up”.
Pip snuggled up under a heating pad. Photo / Dave Gould
“When you take it out onto the deck it does this hard-case little run and leaps into the air, flapping its stubby little wings and just jumping for joy,” Gould laughed.
He intends to give Pip a run-around on the beach to introduce it to sand hoppers when the weather improves. He is aiming to release Pip when it can fly, which will probably be in about a month.
There are approximately 2500 dotterel left, making them more at-risk than some species of Kiwi. Hedgehogs, stoats, cats and rats, dogs, off-road vehicles, housing developments and subsequent erosion, storms and high tides are all threats to their survival.
