I was recently involved in an issue about anxiety caused to protection groups by an international list insisting that the ‘Hooded Plover’ was really a ‘Hooded Dotterel’. Now this morning local ABC radio had a segment about the outrage
in New Zealand caused by Taylor Swift’s production crew taking 11 vehicles onto a beach inhabited by endangered ‘dotterels’. Investigating this further I find the affair has received world-wide coverage with the BBC website devoting much space it. A photo
has the text ‘The dotterel is endangered with something like 1,700 left in New Zealand’. As it happens the BBC has used a photo of what the British like to call ‘The Dotterel’, being
Eudromias morinellus – the Eurasian Dotterel [1 below]. At 2 below I show the figure from Buller’s Birds of New Zealand of
Charadrius obscurus. This, I believe, is the genuine 1700-strong (or not so strong) New Zealand Dotterel or Red-breasted Plover, Swift-disturbed or otherwise. Hooded and Red-breasted Plovers of the world unite.
