Two banded dotterel chicks rescued from harm's way by Jim Cook at Ohakea Air Force Base.
Two banded dotterel chicks rescued from harm's way by Jim Cook at Ohakea Air Force Base.
For Jim Cook, no dotterel’s nest is too much of a nuisance - even if it’s in the way of a large plane.
Cook once came across a dotterel sitting on its nest of four eggs underneath a newly arrived P-8A Poseidon aircraft.
“If the aircraft had started, the eggs would have been sucked up.”
Luckily, Cook was able to successfully relocate the nest, with the mother hatching her chicks in the new spot.
Cook’s role as Airport Environmental Officer involves watching over about 300 to 400 dotterels which fly in big flocks around the Royal New Zealand Air Force base and roost in the grass at night.
It’s no easy job, seeing as the tiny birds have a fondness for nesting on the apron tarmac.
“Once I had to hold eggs in a warm clasp for 10 minutes while an NH90 helicopter and VIPs landed and taxied over the nest. The downdraft would have blown the eggs away.
“They were carefully returned, the mother came back, and all three hatched the following day.”
Jim Cook is devoted to rescuing the declining species of banded dotterels from the path of planes and helicopters at Ohakea.
The banded dotterel that visit Ohakea are a protected, endemic and declining species of small plover found throughout New Zealand, with their nests often discovered on beaches, riverbeds and farmland.
Construction work at Ohakea for the P-8A Poseidons’ new hangars had created piles of gravel and unfinished terrain, which he said reminded the birds of natural river beds.
“They seem completely unafraid of people. There are 20-tonne diggers, huge trucks rumbling past the cone, and they still hatch and rear chicks.”
On some occasions, the dotterels had built nests in ground cavities about to be filled with concrete.
There were often losses during the months when the chicks were learning to fly, as this was when they were most vulnerable.
“They are about the size of a large marble, and speckled grey and black.
“They are really hard to find after they have hatched and take about a month to grow big enough to fledge, but they can run like the wind on ludicrously long legs.”
Feral cats and magpies would sometime kill chicks or devour eggs.
“Every year, about three or four become a statistic on my Bird Strike database.”
Cook previously worked for the New Zealand Wildlife Service and was involved in the Chatham Island black robin’s recovery from the brink of extinction.
Once the dotterels move on as the weather gets cooler, Cook’s role as Airport Environmental Officer will see him faced with a fresh challenge - protecting swallows.
“They congregate in huge flocks on the runway as the light changes in the morning. After resting they get quite slow and cold, and because the runway is black and warm, they come there to warm up for 10 or 15 minutes, then they are off.”
