Ocean Watch

While sailing across the South Pacific last summer, I sometimes came across shorebirds that looked and sounded like kolea, also known as Pacific golden plovers. (The Inuit name for kolea is "tuusiik," after the sound the birds make. Inuit tribes live in arctic regions.)

"Are these the same kind of plovers we have in Hawaii?" a crew member asked.

I didn't know. So when I spotted a little paperback in a Rarotonga kiosk called "Birds of the Cook Islands," I bought it and read it. And I still didn't know.

Last Saturday, my front-yard kolea reminded me of the unanswered question, and now I could look it up.

The answer is yes. The birds we saw on the beaches and in the parks of Tahiti, the Cooks, Tonga, Fiji, New Caledonia and Australia were indeed kolea. They aren't the same individuals that come to Hawaii, but they are the same species.

  
Kolea's, Aitutaki, Cook Islands
(click to enlarge)

I thought that migratory shorebirds hanging out on Southern Hemisphere islands and continents probably mated and raised their chicks in the far reaches of the south. But they don't. All the golden plovers that migrate to the South Pacific breed in the far north in Alaska and arctic Asia.

I only thought the trip between Alaska and Hawaii was a long way for a little bird to go twice a year. Some Southern Hemisphere kolea fly more than 4,000 miles nonstop, reaching an altitude of nearly 4 miles over the ocean. And the trips take their toll. The average plover weighs about one-half pound when it leaves for the north, about one-quarter pound after it returns.

For one reason or another, the birds we saw early in the summer in the South Pacific hadn't made the trip north this year. This sometimes happens among first-year birds, or when a plover is injured or underweight.

Another possibility of why we saw kolea in June and July is that those individuals returned to their wintering grounds early. Depending on conditions, adults can leave their northern breeding sites as early as June. Kolea sightings in early summer, therefore, are normal.

As we plover-lovers know though, most birds return later. As I sailed near Australia's islands and shorelines through August, September and into October, the sights and sounds of kolea became common.

Many of the kolea's northern breeding grounds are so remote, researchers don't even know where they are. The birds' winter territories, however, are widely known because they're our territories, too. These are agricultural fields, beach parks, golf courses, airport runways, military bases, cemeteries, athletic fields and, of course, our own back yards.

In parts of Asia, people still extensively hunt kolea. In West Java alone, about 2,000 are killed each year. Numbers killed in other areas are unknown.

Plover hunting is illegal in the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

It was great coming home to the calls of kolea outside my bedroom window at night. Now that I know they're doing the same thing half the world over, I love these graceful little travelers more than ever.