Plover survives Goldfish with a little help from her friends
Our family went to the Goldfish concert at Emmerentia dam in Johannesburg Sunday afternoon, along with several thousand other enthusiastic music lovers. And while the music was hugely entertaining, the attention of the people around us was centred on the plight of a plover. It had all started when we arrived.
If it wasn’t for a young lady shouting at me, I would have stood on and crushed four plover’s eggs. The ‘mommy’ plover had taken flight as more and more concert goers arrived, and disturbed her nesting area.
We made it our task to protect the eggs and the mommy. And we weren’t alone. Within a couple of minutes several concert goers gave up their chairs to form a protective ring around the eggs. Add a t-shirt and a couple of logs thrown in for good measure and we spent the next five hours warning passers-by to watch their step, with a little screech from the ployer and the eggs remained in fine fettle.
When we left at around 6, the eggs and bird were safely ensconced behind a security fence. My heart was warmed by the collective goodwill shown towards the plover, and a young person who had just walked past, put it in a nutshell: “Amazing. That little bird has so many protectors here. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.”
