Nickie Muir: Dotty do-gooders bad for chicks

Northern Advocate columnist Nicky Muir.

As A knobbly-kneed, roller-skating, 8-year-old, big storms and rainy days meant going out on worm life-saving patrol.

A gaggle of girl scout lumbricidae life savers, we were hell-bent on doing good. Not that any worms ever thanked us for bringing them in from the cold and wet (their favourite place) into a 70s sitting room, especially when our brothers found them and used them for their insatiable appetite for eeling expeditions.

It just felt so good to be saving stuff and generally healing the world, well, for us. Not so much the worms.

So I understood when I got the excited call from my girl that she was "saving" an endangered baby dotterel that had been found "abandoned" on the beach and they were on a mission to the bird rescue centre.

I blame Dora the Explorer. I managed a strangled, "For goodness sake take it back now", before the phone cut out.

I bit my fingernails and waited. Hadn't I drummed in the golden rule that nothing alive gets taken from the beach unless we're going to eat it?

Remembering that back in 2003 the government had felt that the dotterels were so endangered that they spent millions on changing motorway extensions so they could keep breeding near the Northcote off ramp, does not help. I ring the bird rescue centre. He sighs, sounding sad. He asks me to tell them to "take it back now" and tells me they'd only ever managed to feed or recuperate one dotterel. They're just too fragile and can't cope with captivity.

I'd watched dotterels play chicken with aeroplanes, successfully raising chicks in noisy airports where predators and humans remained scant.

I'd seen them nesting in a warehouse car park in Northcote where the constant hum of the nearby motorway kept uncontained humans away.

You know you're a problem species when another species raises its babies near motorways and airports just to get away from you.

I get another crackling phone call.

She's not entirely to blame; some mad woman had dumped the bird in the girls' hands insisting the almost grown chick was "abandoned" and could now not be returned to the mother.

"Everything will be okay Mum, the lady said the bird rescue centre people can just feed it some oysters."

Astounded by the ignorance I try to tell her in as few words as possible that dotterels can't be abandoned by their parents because, despite being the size of bumble bees when just hatched, they feed themselves from day one.

I try to tell her that just being in their hands in a car is enough to give the bird a heart attack and that the bird rescue guy won't be able to help. I try to tell them that if they ever see a dotterel chick the best thing to do is avoid the whole area and stay well away. They take the perfectly healthy, nearly fledged dotterel chick to bird rescue.

It dies. The man there asks me to help get the message out. I promise him I'll try.