Early Morning Plovers:
A visit to Plover Beach via Horse Trails,
08-09-20
Blouberg Strand
The mission today is to take some photographs, for the Plover Blog, using my husband’s new camera. As per usual, this camera will be mine one day when he upgrades. I am an expert at squeezing the last bit of use out of has-been equipment.
The problem with the plovers has been identified. The research is more or less complete for this area, between Horse Trails and the drum (half way) marker.
We intend to be in Cape Town for just over another year. Will the Plovers continue to teach me like they have been doing this last year?
Will they still be here when we leave?
Before last February, I vaguely knew of their existence. Today they are familiar friends. They opened the door to exploring so many other areas relating to nature. Already we are photographing insects living among the Fynbos.
This beach taught me to look at the footprints of birds and other creatures that share our beaches.
They taught me how civilization and man intrude on nature, right here under our noses.
One does not have to research the Internet and encyclopaedias to know about these creatures. It does help of course, I never believe in re-inventing the wheel. If someone studied something in-dept before me, I would rather build on that study than work from scratch. That is progress.
However, one needs to know what one wants to research beforehand.
Nature, ever changing, is our best teacher.
Just be still, open up your heart, mind, ears and eyes all at the same time. Take deep regular breaths and just be with your environment. It is amazing what one learns. Even a camera and binoculars can obstruct the message.
Just sitting on the white sand with book and pencil in hand and record what comes to me is my best teacher.
I have done that since the beginning of the year.
It is now time for research, and polish, correct mistakes and find out what the experts say about this subject.
That is what I want to do with the Plover Blog for the rest of the year.
It was my intention to ask for sponsors so that I can develop this Blog into a website, but I so hate begging for money. Creating a website for the Plovers is no longer a priority. With the courtesy of Google and Blogspot I shall just use what free tools I have to deliver the message.
Perhaps later I shall create a website in memory of the Plovers and other creatures who lost their home due to human progress.
Human progress is nature regress.
Sunday 17 August 2008
It was a lovely day in Cape Town.
The poor plovers must have had a difficult time dodging the pedestrians on Blouberg beach on their narrow strip of territory today
7-08-2008
Big Bay (Horse Trails)
(1/4 Moon tide - in-between tides (10 am. The low tide was at 7 am)
It is a sunny, warm and windless morning here on Blouberg Beach between the Horse Trails and the old drum.
It was not my intention to spend much time with the plovers today. There is not much more I can write about them, I thought. What needed to be written is done, I argued in my mind.
Habits persist, however. My eyes scanned the high tide mark. This is where they normally breed and hide from predators.
Immediately the narrowness of the plover area becomes evident. Before the dune stabilization was introduced, the high tide area stretched far out towards the road. Now the highest waves hits against the dunes, which developed because of the vegetation introduced by conservation efforts.
The area between Horse Trails and BCA already eroded the high tide mark, where the plovers like to be. The high tide now hits against a wall of sand created by a dune stabilization programme.
The same is happening between Big Bay and Horse Trails.
The plover habitat is between the Horse Trails and the old drum (halfway mark). They were behaving as if a female was breeding somewhere. Their colors are very light, and they are unusually camouflaged today.
Their three toed footprints are evidence of the areas they frequent, the narrow strip flotsam beyond the high tide mark.
I do not even know if it is possible for these twelve pair of plovers to be saved.
There are a few things that can be done to extend their existence a bit longer if we have a conservation group that regards them as worth conserving.
Possible solutions can be:
The Horse trail has a double entrance to the beach. Removing the one closer to Blouberg will stop people taking a shortcut over the dune and right over the plover-breeding zone.
Use the wooden fence around the footpath, to cordon off some of the plover territories.
Use notifications advising people to stay clear of these areas.
These fences may have to be shifted or will disappear under the sand, but it is at least doing something.
Microchip some of the plovers to study their movements when this area becomes too unfriendly.
Before I close this blog, I will have to write a few letters of appeal on behalf of these little birds, but I am not very hopeful.
It was not the plovers that I noticed when I became aware of the plight of coastal birds along this stretch of wild coast that was opened for public recreation.
Within a very short time this quiet beach turned into a major destination for sunbathers, people walking their dogs and fossil collectors.
When the decision was made to turn a major beach, Big Bay, into a high-rise concrete jungle, the closure of the most popular beach along Marine Drive, forced people in search for beach recreation further up the coast. This action caused a major disturbance to sea birds and animals that previously, nearly exclusively, used this section of the shoreline as their territory.
The beach that was previously interrupted occasionally by humans, nearly overnight became a popular resort.
Although this is a popular beach for water sport, the water is mostly too cold for bathers without wet suits. Blouberg also used to be very windy, however the weather also, seems to have changed.
The only people who used this beach were the white-mussel collectors.
That activity in itself added to the food supply for the sea birds.
Today there is no place for birds who rely on the beach for breeding and food. As the beach traffic increases daily, when more and more people move into newly built dwellings, the birds are pushed farther and farther away from their food source and the area that they need for nesting and camouflage.
What will happen to these little birds?
My guess is that their inability to breed and feed regularly will eventually lead to their extinction on this shoreline. Perhaps this is inevitable. They have no bank balance, so they have no right to be here according to human law.
Here, at Blouberg, they remain silent witnesses of how the habits of man impact on nature, without we even being aware of it.
Not even the dogs notice these shy, brave little birds; The beach plovers.
The Oystercatcher suffers the same fate, but they are bigger and quicker on the wing.
When they no longer visit an area, one knows about it. They are visible. Bird lovers miss their disappearances. Yet no-one knows or cares about the plovers. One cannot miss something that never existed.
These feathered, camouflaged, beach dwellers struggle on long after the Oystercatchers left to look for better breeding ground.
The intention of this website is to make people aware of the plight of sea birds, to make them visible.
Doing that I may save a nest, or I may hasten their extinction. At least, hopefully, they will be missed by someone when they are gone. Once you see them and become aware of their existence, one cannot help falling in love with them. They are so special, so vulnerable, so quietly invisible ... like the thoughts in your mind or the feelings in your heart - invisible to the human eye. It is a rare treat to spot one.
They survived this long because no one notice them.
However, at Blouberg, it is because no one knows that they are there that they walk over their breeding ground and that they are driven from their food supply.
It is my hope that people will respect these birds, and perhaps develops a group of local residents who will become the friends or guardians of the plovers between Blouberg and the BCA
Perhaps some school child will take this topic on as a school project. Perhaps then, we will miss them when they are gone.
Perhaps then we can feel sad because Blouberg lost its virginity to the rape by progress.
(The beach in question is the stretch of beach between Big Bay (Blouberg Strand) and the BCA (Blouberg Conservation Area), with a central (temporary) legal access to the beach at "The Horse Trails." There are also many unofficial access routes through the protected nature area.)
R W
