Word about the Hood Biannual newsletter of BirdLife Australia’s Beach-nesting Birds Program Edition 15 – June 2016 UPDATE FROM THE BEACH-NESTING BIRDS TEAM Source: Glenn Ehmke Renée Mead and Meghan Cullen, Beach-nesting birds interim Managers! The birds started on time this season (August), and had many of us off guard at how quickly the season took off! Normally there’s a spattering of nests recorded along the coast, and then it really starts to pick up and get into the swing of things in late September (depending on the region). But the birds started in August, and then kept going, and going, and going, with the last fledgling recorded in Belfast Coastal Reserve in Far west Victoria in mid April. The Beach-nesting Birds team have been busy delivering and finalising grants, and supporting our diverse Friends of the Hooded Plover groups across southern east Australia. We’ve been busy on Eyre Peninsula, Samphire Coast, Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia, in Victoria we’ve been all along the Great Ocean Road, Mornington Peninsula, Bass Coast – and everywhere in between! Late in January, Coast and Marine Program Manager, Dr. Grainne Maguire went on maternity leave! This was a bit sudden as itty bitty little Elara was born early. Grainne would like to pass on her disappointment at not getting to say a temporary goodbye to everyone and apologises for leaving some things unfinished. After a long four months, Elara is out of hospital. She is a well loved member of the BNB team, and little sister to Kai! We want to congratulate Grainne on the arrival, and we look forward to her first venture back onto the beach to look for hoodies! Meg and I have been working tirelessly to try and keep the project running as smoothly as we can while Grainne is on leave and we want to thank everyone for helping us out, as we’re still finding our feet without a key member of our team! We have enlisted some extra hands to help while Grainne is on maternity leave – Dan Lees and Kasun Ekanayake have come on board for a couple of days a week to help Meg and I out over the coming months! We welcome them on board! But, back to the birds! It has been a ripper of a season! We’ve had such a great success in most areas, and some regions have recorded the highest number of fledglings since BirdLife monitoring began – so it’s been a great reward for those volunteers who have seen nests fail season after season – but like the Hooded Plover, the volunteers persevere on, and have had a wonderful end to the season. We hope to explore the data and identify changes which occurred this season which may account for such a boom! Already we have hosted regional debriefs to chat to volunteer and land managers about the previous season, what worked, what didn’t and to start preparations for next season. We attended these on the Fleurieu Peninsula (SA), and in Victoria we did these for Far West Victoria, Apollo Bay, Bellarine Peninsula, Surf Coast and Bass Coast, South Gippsland and even Wilsons Prom! Make sure all your data from the 2015-16 season is in the portal by the 18th July – after this, we will be initialising the portal ready for the 2016-17 season – with some new and exciting developments! We’ve been busy in the office, applying for new grants so we can take the project where we want it, writing reports for grants now completed, applying for permits and ethics for both Red-capped Plover and Hooded Plover monitoring and flagging in SA, and Hoodie work in VIC including a pilot study this coming season of using radio trackers to determine chick fates. It’s all paperwork this time of year, and trying to secure funds to keep the project going long term and make sure there is a smooth transition into the next breeding season! We hope you all enjoyed the 2015-2016 breeding season, and look forward to the next one! A SNAPSHOP OF THE 2015/2016 BREEDING SEASON Across Victoria and on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia it has been an exceptionally good season, with many regions confirming their highest number of fledglings since records began. Some regions didn’t have such a successful season, but overall, it was a positive result for Hooded Plovers. The results below are preliminary summary results, we’re still confirming the detailed data, but at the moment, it was a pretty good season, with 174 pairs monitored and 137 fledglings produced this season, the highest record to date. This brings the average to 0.78 fledglings per pair – our aim is to reach between 0.4 and 0.5 fledglings per pair – the fledgling per pair number is important to reach as a target, as this is the minimum number of fledglings required to be able to recruit enough young into the population to halt the decline.! We look forward to going through this data in detail to compare and see what may have resulted in such a great year. This effort would not have been possible if it weren’t for the continued and dedicated management, education and research into the species. Coastal Communities are adopting Hooded Plovers as a flagship species for healthy coastlines and the sense of ‘ownership’ within communities is wonderful. Even Renee’s real-estate agent had heard of the Hooded Plover, and she wasn’t even near a Hooded Plover beach! So the word is spreading, thanks to the tireless efforts of over 750 volunteers and dedicated land managers. Region # pairs monitored Fledglings Fledglings/pair Bellarine-Surf Coast 13 10 0.76 Otways 13 10 0.77 Far West Victoria 34 26 0.76 Mornington Peninsula 30 7 0.23 Phillip Island 18 17 0.94 Bass Coast 36 23 0.63 South Gippsland (including Wilsons Prom) 17 15 0.88 Fleurieu, SA 21 19 0.90 2 Word about the Hood - Edition 15 WELCOME TO OUR NEW BEACH-NESTING BIRDS STAFF AND INTERNS! BEACH-NESTING BIRDS PROJECT OFFICER Kasun Ekanayake It is good to be back to saving Hoodies finally managing to finish my PhD after 4 years. After all, it was working with Hooded Plovers and Red-capped Plovers that encouraged me to study the Little Raven for my PhD because the smart corvids were outcompeting foxes when it came to preying on eggs of the plovers. Therefore, I decided to study the egg predatory behaviour of Little Ravens and I chose two prey species namely, the ground-nesting Red- capped Plover and the burrow-nesting Little Penguin. I found that Ravens were responsible for preying on 61% of Little Penguin clutches and 79% of Red-capped Plover clutches and that Ravens were congregating to the breeding grounds of both these prey species during their breeding seasons to take advantage of eggs as a food source. It was amazing to see how Ravens went about raiding the burrows of Little Penguins to steal the eggs. Based on what I found during my PhD, a second PhD student Ms Laura Tan is now investigating potential means of managing egg predation by Ravens, the results of which will be extremely interesting! Hopefully we will be able to find a solution to this emergent threat which will in turn help us in saving Hoodies as well. BEACH-NESTING BIRDS PROJECT OFFICER Daniel Lees From a young age I have always had an interest in wildlife and conservation, however my passion for wildlife began not with birds, but with a keen interest in reptiles. It was not until my 2012 Honours year when I chose a project looking at the parental defence of the Masked Lapwing; that my passion for wildlife was focussed onto ornithology. At the end of 2013 I began a PhD candidature at Deakin University under Dr Grainne Maguire and Dr Mike Weston, with a project looking at sex-ratio variation in three species of resident shorebird (Red-capped Plover, Hooded Plover and the ever underappreciated Masked Lapwing). The project has had a substantial field component and I have relished working closely with the birds in the wild, and even developed a passion for wildlife photography. After having finished my final season of fieldwork (radio-tracking Red-capped Plover broods) I was lucky enough to come on board the Beach-nesting Birds team. So far I have been using the data analysis skills I developed throughout my postgrad to vet and analyse BNB portal data, compile regional nesting summaries and draft this newsletter. 3 BIRDLIFE AUSTRALIA INTERN Jonathon Wilson Hi everyone!, So I have just recently started an internship with Birdlife Australia where I will be working with the Beach-nesting Birds team, to help to organise a conference on the NSW coast to promote endangered beach-nesting bird conservation. I will be working in the Birdlife head office in Melbourne, working on a variety of tasks such as making surveys and contacting caravan parks and stakeholders, to inform them of the conference. During January and February of 2016, I completed a professional placement at Birdlife for my university studies, where I worked with the Beach-nesting Birds team and did various tasks around the office. One of these was compiling an extensive list of all the caravan parks along the NSW coast, which would then be used to contact the parks to ask them about their environmental awareness and knowledge of beach-nesting birds. At Deakin University, I am in my third year studying Wildlife and Conservation Biology, and so far I have really enjoyed my course and found the content engaging and exciting to learn about.