The Plovers In Our Street
These native Australian birds are more territorial than anything I have seen. They and their predecessors have lived in our street probably for thousands of years before their living space was turned into a suburb but they refuse to move on. There is a family of about 6 of them living around my mate Murray's house. They wonder around the street and are quite used to cars. You can drive quite close to them without scaring them but if you walk up to them, they fly off so it has been difficult for me to get a good photograph of our delightful neighbours. They are quite active during part of the night. I can hear their call and see their silhouettes when I cycle around our neighbourhood after work at night for my daily exercise.

I just hope that the young hoons in their noisy Nissan Skyline doughnut drawing machines hit the brakes when a plover crosses the road. Murray tells me he has seen some kids throwing rocks at the plovers. They should be throwing rocks at the Nissan Skylines! Hey kids, leave those birds alone!

Have a look at this picture of a female and spot the sharp spurs on the wings. They will dive at you to defend their nest with the aim of stabbing you with one of these spears. To me the spears make the bird in attack mode look like a WWII Spitfire.


Behind her is her male and the two were very agitated at me slowly moving towards their nest. They are quite used to Murray and don't even bother getting up from the nest when he approaches but they did a few diving attacks on me. I stood still for quite a while and also moved slowly to try and calm them. The nest is flat on the ground on his front lawn, half way between his house and the street.







The hen on the nest. It was quite tricky to take this photo. I first tried walking slowly towards the nest to get close enough but she was spooked and ran off. Then I quietly waited, hoping she would get used to me but to no avail. I could not stay too long otherwise the eggs would get cold so I gave up. A few days later, I figured it out. The birds are scared of humans but quite used to cars driving by so I reversed my car up Murray's driveway so that the driver side faced the nest on the lawn. It worked. She was at ease with the car being there so I got this picture:



The chicks hatched. Click here and I'll show you.

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