Butterfly bird

Blogger: Campaign Manager for the Black Fronted Dotteral and Lower North Island Field Officer, Aalbert Rebergen.

Last year I championed an obnoxious, loud-mouthed arriviste – the Spur Winged Plover – in the Bird of the Year poll and came, well, bottom of the pops.

Black fronted dotterel, Photo: Brett Donald, Creative Commons

In what one might consider to be a foolishy reckless move, I am again going to throw my weight behind another Australian: the Black-fronted dotterel.

This one is not so typically Australian though. It’s a winsome little bird that flies like a butterfly.

It’s has an unhurried, stop-start, undulating style of flying that immediately drew a bundle of questions in my mind.

I wonder how a bird with such a slow,  dreamy flying style managed to cross the Tasman, even in numbers large enough to create a self sustaining NZ population?

First seen in New Zealand in the 1950s, the dotterel first settled on the banks of several rivers in the Hawkes Bay, and then spread rapidly southwards all the way down to Tim Shadbolt’s part of the woods.

They breed on shingle river beds but also feed on lake shores and near small muddy – ephemeral – puddles.

Most New Zealanders won’t have seen them, or heard them because they’re one of those secretive, taciturn types – when they do call it’s a soft ‘peet, peet’ sound. 

I am fortunate enough to see them most days at Henley (recreation) Lake in Masterton, next to the Ruamahanga River where they nest.

I fear its closeted lifestyle though will make it hard for the black-fronted dotterel to poll well in Bird of the Year but then, the kiwi won last year and it spends its waking life cloaked in darkness! 

So go the black-fronted dotterel: our mysterious, river-butterfly