Into the final stretch (hopefully)

Here we are at the end of week 5 and thought I would kick off with a video (above).

Each morning I go out to check on how the family has fared through the night and each time I see them it still amazes me.

This was a big week for the chick as the tides were high, there was plenty of people traffic but luckily the family had enough guardians working for them to hold back the tide of people when they needed to cross from beach to mangroves and vice versa.

We've worked out a system when we can see the birds indicating they are wanting to cross and then we place four people around the lagoon to ask people to hold (this can be up to half an hour if we can't convince people to wait), but mostly has been a maximum of 12 minutes.

There was one group of kayakers that wanted to come through the lagoon that were a family group of beginners. We explained the story and the kids all wanted to stop and watch the crossing rather than do the kayaking. They unfortunately did not get to see it as we had disturbance from the yabby pumpers (not commercial) that I have mentioned in a previous email as well as another oystercatcher that wanted to join the party and didn’t seem to understand why it was not welcome, so kept coming back. That crossing took a long time to actually get started and completed.

There are 4 other oystercatchers using the Fishermans Bay end of the tidal flats. Being a flock at this time of year I am thinking they may be juveniles. It will be interesting to see if, once the chick fledges. the parents are happy to mix with these other oystercatchers. We may, for the first time in the memory of those that take notice of birds, see a flock of oystercatchers using our tidal flats and roosting beach.

Early in the week we had the parents having to alarm call the chick for the falcon, also a juvenile sea eagle that circles around about 4.30pm. When the chick is on the beach and the call goes out it heads promptly into the chick shelters. It was actually spending most of its time on the beach in the shelters because of this unrelenting heat. The parent birds are out in the blazing sun keeping guard, while the chick slumbers away inside one of its little homes.

The tides the last two days have been quite low so the parents have not had to swim the chick to the beach. The chick was able to stay relatively dry in the mangroves so the parents chose not to risk the crossing where the chick is vulnerable to avian attack. The parents, individually, both had a half hour shift roosting on the beach as that is normal behaviour for adult birds, but if they did not have a chick they would roost for a longer time and be together.

What has started to happen is that the chick is now joining the parents on the tidal flats, albeit very close to the edge of the mangroves, going through the motions of digging up its own food. There is still an enormous amount of cheating going on in that the parents are still placing food down in front of the chick to dig up.

Yesterday there was a large group of yabby pumpers quite close to the family in the mangroves and the parents did not alarm call the chick to hide. Seems the tolerance distance is starting to shorten.

There have been around a dozen people asking if the campgrounds were closed because of the birds having nested, which I thought an interesting supposition.

Two days ago one of our chick guardians saw the chick flapping, jump, and travel around ½ a metre. This coming week may be our last week of having a flightless chick. We can’t become complacent though as there are still large crowds to manage around our family given this heat wave with regular 30 degree plus days.

Kids seem like they are starting to get bored with the holidays. We have had three groups in the last two days either wandering through the enclosure, searching (presumably for the chick) or running through as a dare. Another reason why we need to keep our eyes on the birds when they are on the beach.

I was just about to finish up but heard dogs barking on the beach and had to go down to the beach and head them off. These were on leads while owners were in the water, with the dogs running around the beach. This was right beside one of the 1 metre high “No Dogs Allowed” signs installed on the beach, easily visible from the Pacific Crescent access points.