Nesting oystercatcher evicted

Please keep the following under your hats. It is better to manage the communication re the oystercatcher nesting all at once, at the end of the season. When that final communication goes out you’ve got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative.

If parts of the story get out along the way then they can swirl around the villages like a tornado. They can become Chinese whispers with the “facts” becoming more like “alternative facts”.

Many people would be aware of the expression, “be careful what you wish for”. I think I need to add a new expression, “be careful what you ask”. I have been wondering for a while what is to happen to the birds that successfully breed at Towra? Where do they go? I may have received a reply.

Yesterday at 6am I was looking out at the nest site and saw something I’d never seen before. I sent it to my contact at Birdlife Australia and she’d never seen it before either. The video is now circulating around Australia to those people that do a lot of work with pied oystercatchers to see if there is an explanation.

I had been saying I did not think the oystercatchers nesting on the beach were our regular pair as their behaviour was so different.

I have included a Youtube link (it is 55 seconds long) but I warn you, it is confronting. If you are sensitive, it is probably better not to look.

So what happened?

A new male turned up on the beach and physically ripped the nesting male away from the nest. It was attacked so viciously that the nest now lies abandoned. I had to go across and break up the fight or one of the oystercatchers would have died.

I heard an oystercatcher calling in great distress later that afternoon, trying to find its partner, and the new pairing had another go at it, making sure it was not going back to the nest.

I thought I had figured out all the threats. This one completely floored me. It may be nature imitating politics. It seems forceful takeovers and removal against the public’s wishes is not the sole domain of politicians.

In the past oystercatcher territory claiming has been quite tame. This is included as part of the first 10 seconds of the video. They generally make a lot of noise, put their heads down and push the intruder off the beach. So what happens when birds are short of nesting space?

Perhaps they resort to ripping nesting birds of their own species off nest to claim space and partners that are in such short supply. Words fail me as to the horror of the situation if this is true.

The new pair promptly went to work digging back at a nest worked on way back on the 9th of September.

The first nest chosen had much better positioning than the nest the pair is now working. This potential new nest is opposite the right of way access to the Spit at 35 Pacific Crescent and the eastern end of Constables Point Reserve. This is a busy access point for people to access the Spit. It is outside the current fence line. With any luck they’ll change their mind and move to an area inside the fence but they are showing zero signs of that happening at the moment.

The original pair are hard at it with mating and scraping but that could be part of partnership establishment.

Here’s hoping this new potential nest goes without incident. The birds have to eventually get a win given all the work, hopes and dreams that goes into their nesting.