Ocean
Watch
Monday, December 30, 1996
Plovers’ battle for territory
goes on after rival’s death
Barely a week goes by without someone telling me a
story or asking a question about our entertaining winter visitors, the
Pacific golden plovers.
Recently, someone asked me if these birds ever form
flocks like ruddy turnstones and sanderlings. I said no. I was wrong.
Plovers do form flocks in Hawaii, usually at night,
when they sleep.
We don't usually see such flocks (in mangroves, on flat
rooftops, beaches, hillsides, parking lots and lava flows) because most
birds go there after dark and leave before first light.
Such roosting flocks range from a few birds to more
than 300.
It's hard to imagine these aggressive, territorial
birds sleeping together. They do, but it doesn't sound like they get much
rest. Pecking and squabbling is common in roosting flocks when one bird
gets closer than 4 or so feet of its neighbor.
Apparently, such horizontal drift is common because
this bird's "elbowing" reportedly goes on all night.
Most of us bird-watchers have seen these sweet-looking
little shorebirds turn into thugs-with-an-attitude when another bird gets
in their space.
But a behavior I saw this fall took the prize for
plover pushiness. In October, while working at a research station in
Hawaii's northwest chain, I noticed that many of the plovers there were
small and listless.
"A lot of them are starving this year," the
manager told me. "We don't know why."
As the days went by, I watched several of these weak
birds stagger, fall, then lie in the hot sun where they soon died.
But death didn't slow the surviving plovers' battle for
territory. The living birds would be foraging, spot the dead or dying
bird, then run over and give it a good, hard peck.
This was hard to watch. Once, we collected a couple of
dead plovers and laid them under the house to keep the living birds from
mutilating the bodies. It didn't work.
A healthy bird dragged a body out, then proceed to peck
it.
What's with these birds, we wondered. Why waste
precious energy beating up dead rivals? We decided the living birds didn't
know the birds were dead.
They spotted that gold-flecked pattern nearby and went
into attack mode.
"They're hard-wired," a biologist friend once
said about such behavior. "There's no deep thought going on in those
little skulls."
Some plovers on the island were surviving, but weren't
doing great.
Besides being small, they were unusually tame when food
was present.
Several even entered the house to eat bread crumbs from
a dish we placed on the floor.
Several tried to enter, that is. Whenever more than one
bird arrived at the open door, a fight broke out with such godawful
screeching, pecking and kicking that we would sometimes drop what we were
doing to watch.
The fight was over in seconds. The winner would
instantly gain his composure and prance to the plate with the grace of a
ballet dancer.
"Let's name him Misha," I said of a
particularly elegant bird.
"Why?" asked one of the volunteer biologists.
"It's Mikhail Baryshnikov's nickname."
"So? Why would you name the plover after him?" she persisted.
"Because he's such a good dancer," I said.
"And so is this bird."
"Mikhail Baryshnikov can dance?" she said.
"Oh yes. Like an angel," I explained. She
looked thoroughly puzzled. "What's wrong?" I asked.
"I just can't picture that heavy-set guy with the
birthmark on his forehead dancing like an angel."
When we stopped laughing, we renamed our house plover
Gorby.
We Hawaii folks love our golden plovers. Send me your
stories.
