31st October 2007

It was an overcast start to the morning again, but that did not deter the birds, who now that they have discovered the bird table cannot stay away…a host of Village Weavers, also the African Golden Weaver, a Glossy Starling (already trying to bully the other birds) and a couple of Bulbuls. I also saw a Green Winged Pytilia hopping around in the bushes by the house – this is a beautiful tiny round bird, with olive green wings, a white and black barred chest and a firey red head. A couple of baboons were fighting down on the beach, and the three Dikkops who for fifteen minutes or so had been standing around quite amicably, suddenly picked a fight with each other too – it must be something in the air today.

PM

Major News! The Spur-winged Plover chicks hatched today. My father came rushing in at around 11am to tell me he had seen one of the newly hatched chicks, but that the second egg was still there. I grabbed the camera and raced down to the river. By now the heat was stifling, with the sun boring down relentlessly on the open sand and the plovers’ nest. Sure enough, there was the tiny chick, and still one egg intact. The parents were taking it in turns to sit on the nest (covering chick and egg both), changing places at 20-minute intervals during the heat of the day. As soon as changeover time approached, the adult on the nest would start calling, and the other bird would reply and start to make its preparations for its return to the furnace. Every single time one of the adult birds was on its way back to the nest, it would first go to the river dip its chest feathers in the water, so that when it sat on the nest, its wet feathers would cool the chick and the egg, and prevent them from overheating in the midday sun. In the photos, you can clearly see the water dripping off the feathers of the adult. It was amazing to witness this behaviour, which could have made the difference between life and death for the tiny chick and its unhatched sibling. (Adult Plovers cool themselves by standing on one leg in the shallow water, and running water down it from the other leg, so this wetting of the chest feathers definitely would seem to be behaviour aimed specifically at cooling the chick and the egg.)

It was also amazing to how the tiny chick managed to survive the less-than-delicate attention of the parent birds, which just plonked themselves down right on top of the chick, often almost standing on it. At one stage, the chick got stuck under a stick fro the nest and almost got throttled by it, but the parent made no attempt to move it. Eventually, after a lot of struggling and flapping of its tiny wings, the chick managed to extricate itself.

When I first arrived, the tiny, superbly camouflaged little chick was completely helpless – just a little ball of fluff, unsteady in its movements and certainly unable to defend itself. It was difficult to tell when it had actually hatched out – perhaps early this morning, or maybe even late last night. It still looked a bit wet, but that could have been from the parents’ water-soaked chest feathers, deliberately keeping it constantly moist and cool. There was no eggshell left in the nest at all, and I wondered what had happened to it. Had the parents taken it away and disposed of it elsewhere to keep the nest clean?

As the chick became stronger during the next few hours – a remarkably fast process – it quickly became adventurous and would sneak out from beneath the sitting adult at any given opportunity, although the parent only allowed this when a cloud passed overhead – otherwise the chick remained firmly in the shade provided by the adult’s body. When the sitting bird exchanged places with the other, the changeover happened very quickly, so as not to leave the tiny chick and as yet unhatched egg in the scorching sun for more than a moment.

In fact, it seemed to me, now one chick had hatched, that the changeovers happened much more quickly than yesterday, with one parent stepping off the nest and the other replacing it immediately. Yesterday, when there were just the two eggs and no hatched chicks, the parents often left the nest uncovered for a couple of minutes between changeovers – but perhaps the faster changeovers today were just because it was midday and the heat was ferocious, for both chick and egg. Who knows?

Other creatures started to emerge while I was sitting with the plovers: a herd of Impala and a troop of Vervet Monkeys…a Fork-Tailed Drongo, and the Pied Kingfisher again…and then, to my right, a large Monitor Lizard. This could spell doom for the plovers. If the lizard found the nest, he would devour both the chick and the egg. Fortunately, the lizard turned in the other direction, and never even saw the nest.

As the afternoon heat subsided, the changeovers between sitting birds became a little more relaxed, with the parents leaving the nest exposed for a few moments at a time, and giving me the opportunity to take some photos of the chick. It was then, at 4.20 in the afternoon, that I noticed the second egg starting to hatch. What an amazing thing to witness – the birth of a tiny, new life…first there was a speckled egg, and then there was a tiny brand new plover – from one minute to the next.

Breaking out of an egg is obviously a tiring business; the new chick would take long breaks when it would lie there completely still, its eyes closed, looking thoroughly exhausted, still half in its shell. Its older sibling seemed entirely disinterested and ignored the new arrival completely. As for the parents, it’s a mystery how they did not crush the poor thing as it was trying to complete its hatching process – they just plonked themselves down on top of it. Shade is one thing, being suffocated as you’re trying to break out of your eggshell is quite another!

And then, the mystery of the disappearing eggshell was solved – I watched as one of the parent birds picked up the discarded pieces of shell from the nest, and ate them. As good a way as any, I suppose, of recycling the nutrients in the shell.

At around 5pm, the older chick decided it had had enough of parochial nest life, and on wobbly legs, with feet far too big for its tiny body, after a couple of tumbles and a tricky incident when one of its oversized feet got stuck to a piece of wet eggshell, it left the nest. At this stage, one of the parents who had been standing nearby (leaving the new hatchling completely on its own out in the open), rushed around for a few minutes looking completely overexcited and confused when it saw the older chick had left the nest, and then started to call it. It went up near to the chick, still calling, as if encouraging the chick to follow and showing it how to find shelter in its shadow. The parent’s chest feathers were still wet and it obviously wanted to use them to cool down the chick, which must have been getting very hot out on the exposed and shadeless sandbank. The chick did not seem to get the message for a long time, but eventually, when the parent found a depression in the sand, where it was easy for the chick to get underneath it, the chick finally seemed to understand what it was meant to do. But it did not want to stay under the parent for long – as soon as it could escape, it was out again, and off exploring across the sand.

Plover chicks have to feed themselves from the minute they hatch, and it seemed to me, the parent bird was also trying to demonstrate how to peck at the ground to pick up insects.

With a few headfirst tumbles en route, the diminutive chick and its parent crossed the open sand and reached the river’s edge – life outside the nest was underway, more or less 12 short hours since the chick hatched.

Meanwhile, the new hatchling was still on its own, with no shelter. At least by now the sun was going down, so the heat was bearable. As the shadows started to lengthen across the beach, I was relieved to see the other adult return to the nest, and huddle down with the new chick… it now stands a good chance of getting through the night, and joining its sibling across the sand in the morning.

Follow the entire Plover Story in Pictures...