Oystercatcher Diary - 2015 Day 2.11 Last

I delayed sending the note out for this day. A fox had taken the eggs again on the evening of the 31st. It was too hard to write having failed a second time.

The note was sent out on the 9th November.

We've had some cheers, we've had some tears, the floodgates of sorrow are now fully open.

I had been watching our pair each morning as that was when they were wandering the spit and building scrapes. I was keen to know where the new egg we had to protect was going to appear.

Monday morning I got up and there was just one Oystercatcher sitting at their home. I thought, bugger, I've missed the egg laying. No bother, I'll just go up and sit with the Oyk and wait until it leads me to the nest at changeover time. So we sat there, and sat there until it got up, did a tremendous amount of pacing and calling before flying down the beach to feed.

I followed it down and then started to get concerned. Spent about 4 hours watching and realised that it was not going to lead me to a nest. Went home, head hung low, and waited until evening. Oyk came back, alone. It was calling and calling with no reply.

Bad nights sleep and then dragged myself out of bed. While making a coffee I was looking out of the window and saw a pair of Oyks. My heart started leaping. But these two were not doing what the usual two had been doing. These ones were just ambling along the beach at high tide mark, feeding. This wasn't something I'd seen our pair do this season. Their feeding was in a much smaller area closer to the nesting site.

The two eventually made it up to the nesting zone when our solo Oyk came out of hiding to see these two. Normally, our Oyks had defended their home territory really aggressively to chase these two off. This time when our Oyk realised there was another Oystercatcher close it started calling and walking towards the pair. It started following them and calling until they eventually tired of the attention and flew off towards Bundeena leaving our Oyk alone again.

So that was it. My heart totally sank as the realisation came through like a tidal wave that something untoward had happened to one of our breeding pair. I have not sent a note to you all before now as it has been too hard to write and I was holding out a small hope that our missing one was maybe a little unwell and would return. But really, our other Oyk would not have left an injured or sick partner alone. They have been together too long now and had it been alive, they would be waiting together.

We do have another pair that is spending quite a bit of time checking out the area and now that they are not going to be chased off, may decide to breed here. Our pair had considered them enough competition to make sure they didn't stay on the beach too long.

I will be doing a project plan for things we need to do in preparation for next breeding season that I can submit to council and parks. It will start with fox trapping, hopefully a month before breeding season begins nest year as the only trap we can use here is the hardest kind to catch a smart fox in and so requires a lot of time and patience to catch one. I will be storing the perimeter poles, but our rope has had it and will need to be replaced. It was cut that many times by people and has rubbed around the wooden posts because of wind, so is mostly knots and is very frayed and twisted.

Thank you everyone for your help and concern. It really gives Sydney some hope that beach nesting birds and people can co-exist.

This first season gave us so much experience on best management practice for managing a beach nesting bird site. We have learnt so much and will be so much better prepared for next time and can swing into action much quicker. We will need to work on getting community interest ramped up as the more people you have behind you the greater the chance of success for our birds to successfully nest. The vast majority of people we have met on the beach have been so supportive so next year if we get some eggs the letterbox drop should be to both Maianbar and Bundeena.

The local dog owners were great in keeping the dogs away from the Spit. In the end, the majority of dog owners that were on the beach were those coming by watercraft, so will need a good brain storm session on how to reach these people to let them know Horderns is the beach that allows dogs, not Deeban Spit. If you are coming in by boat it really isn't a great stretch to go one more beach. The only other ones we had trouble with were from Bundeena and they have dogs that are anti-social with other dogs, so they can't use a dog beach. Long term that can't be allowed to continue as eventually the anti-social, off leash dogs are going to start running into each other on the dog free beach.

Thanks again everyone. Hoping that next season we can get some chicks raised.

#2015