Bringing Up Salt and Pepper - A Pair of Plover Chicks

They both fitted into the palm of Pete's hand and were very thankful of a warm hand rescuing them from the confusion of mum not being around.

Plovers are precocial (means fully feathered and able to feed itself) however they still need the protection of mum and her guidance on hiding when anything that may be a predator comes close.

Initally we blocked off our dining room, put up a sign 2 Plover Close and started to set up a really nice plover environment.

It was a lavish tray every day and it was mostly all consumed. They need a wide variety of food to thrive and I think we got the mix just right.

Pete also dug up more termite mounds dirt with live termite mounds in the dirt as well.

The little treasures soon learnt that not all their food moved and grew at an amazing rate. We weighed them every day and as you can see from the growth chart excerpt from Salt's records that it was phenomenal to watch them.

Pepper grew more slowly and was smaller. We determined she must be a female as a result but were not sure.

After 3 weeks we moved them outside to an avairy with a dirt floor and a verandah extension of grass and set up a similar environment.

They became wilder and just ate and ate and grew and grew.....

The next stage was in the kangaroo release pens where there was a babies enclosure measuring approx 20 metres x 10 metres.

They loved being out there and thrived with the sunshine and exercise

We decided that after a couple of weeks we would open the babies enclosure gate and let them have the whole 8 acres of kangaroo release pens. Once they were ready they could fly over the 6 foot fencing and would be able to look after themselves.

This is exactly what happened. Salt and Pepper flew into the house yard, we continued to put out a small amount of food and they grazed and were quite content. They were not as flighty as wild plovers but still kept a good distance from us.

We have a number of resident plovers and the habitat around one of our dams is their favourite with a grassy area and waterway.

Pepper the smaller of the two (presume female) was quite quickly adopted by the wild group leaving poor Salt to wander around by himself. This was only for a short time though as he soon flew out to talk to his wild friends but was always happy to fly back and have a snack.

Eventually over about 3 weeks he stayed out more and more and flew in less to greet us. 
 

One evening we watched him take off and fly right down to a far dam (100 metres), circle around and land with some wild friends. We knew Salt would be fine too.