This was the ninth. Dotterel Forum. This time held at Ambury Regional Reserve. Covid rather put the last on hold. My first was in 2016 when I was invited to speak about our work around Shoal estuary to protect this species. It's always interesting to hear what others are doing to help these birds and protect their habitat.
Today I learnt about another way to use nest shelters to keep black backed gulls and hawks from raiding the nests and killing chicks and destroying eggs. Our shelters are tall, but Cam at the Crest group had shown a much lower shelter covering a nest that effectively stopped a black backed gull from getting to the eggs from above and it certainly wasn't keen to stoop underneath either. Cams excellent video showed that to good effect.
We use a denser smaller netting that also has the additional benefit of breaking up the nest pattern to foil over flying harriers.
Shaun discusses data collection and habitat information.