We have lift off!
What a difference a day makes. Yesterday it was 38 degrees with blazing sunshine and today it is 23 degrees with light showers.
I made it over to the beach with time to spare hoping I might see an attempt at flying but settled in and watched the chick swim across the lagoon. The lagoon was near full of water at that time so I guess it wasn't a surprise.
I cancelled today's volunteers as it looked like it was going to be very quiet. I went across just in case but once the showers started I tried ringing home so I could get a lift back. By that time the channel was too deep for me to get back across, but the home phone went unanswered.
I really didn't want to just sit around in the drizzle. With the lack of people I left my gear for a walk to the other end of the Spit as I could see there were curlews and the other flock of oystercatchers. There were only 3 of the 4 oystercatchers there today and 20 curlews.
By the time I made it back to the oystercatcher roost site I figured I was only half an hour from the chick swim back across the lagoon so I might as well wait. There was a very strong southerly, which the chick would be fighting against, making the crossing more dangerous. The falcon put in another appearance this morning, as did our two remaining little terns.
11.00am came and went and the birds were all still on the beach. Then 11.15, 11.30, 11.45 and the lagoon water was almost gone. Maybe the parents had decided it would be safer to walk the chick across together rather than make it swim?
Was I wrong. I had my camera focused on mum oystercatcher guessing the chick would be shortly walking into frame when the little chick came flying over the top. The chick then came back to mum and they both started walking towards the mangroves. I saw the little chick adopt a pose that looked like it was going to launch, and it did. It made it three quarters of the way to the mangroves so a really terrific distance.
Hatched on a Sunday, now flying, Sunday 6 weeks later. I am hoping that flying is now going to be the only way to travel. If that is the case, I am going to have to work out a new timetable as flying appears to happen when there is little water in the lagoon. Until I am confident that the chick is fully fledged I will continue to keep an eye on it and keep its safety fence up, with shelters in place. We have wiggle room here as our Council coordinator is still on leave.
From here, possibly, they will start to fly the chick down to Fishermans Bay as the food supply is actually better down that way. It is where all our migratory waders feed. I imagine they will probably continue to high tide roost where they now are as historically that is where they have been the last few years.
One morning I will go across and little family will have departed to introduce the chick to other spaces and join a flock that it can hang out with until it reaches breeding age. That day I will be both sad and overjoyed.
What an effort the volunteers and Sutherland Shire Council have put in since we first found eggs on the beach 4 years ago.
We thought it was going to take us 10 years before we managed to hatch a chick. We had an enormous amount of luck with the campgrounds having to close because there is asbestos coming to the surface that needs to be removed. Many people, locals and visitors alike, were upset about this so at least there is something positive that has come out of the temporary closure.
STOP PRESS:
Just when you think can start to sit back and relax because the hard work is done. Beware. There is one more idiot lurking in the wings to deliver something so far out of left field that it leaves you with your jaw hanging on the ground.
The tidal flats that the oystercatcher family crosses at least twice a day has a car bogged in it almost up to the top of the wheels.
Obviously cars are not permitted to drive on the tidal flats or beach. National parks campground has hazards embedded in the ground to stop people driving on to it. There was either a gap because some have deteriorated over the years (I thought parks had fixed them all as we had alerted them last year) or these bozos removed one or more themselves.
They went about destroying mangroves to put under the wheels, they helped themselves to $150 worth of Council rope that was part of the oystercatcher protection fence. They later drove off with this rope but one of our volunteers was able to snatch it out of the back of their ute when he saw it at Bonnievale on his way home. The rope is now so badly damaged, however, it won't be able to be reused.
Once the guys had unbogged themselves, one of the people observing the carnage suggested I should go and stand by the oystercatcher family that had been flushed from the mangroves and were waiting on the other side of tidal flat, near their fenced area. He thought, if it was him that had been bogged out there, to get off the tidal flat he would head to the dryer sand to drive along the beach to the boat ramp. Of course I did want to have to go and stand in front of a car full of idiots, but I have come this far so I couldn't let the oystercatchers down now. Fortunately, the driver was not as smart as the onlooker and the car went back the way they had come in.
Given the destruction to the tidal flats, mangroves and council property you may be surprised to learn that the only fine they will receive is from national parks for moving the bollards that prevents entrance to the closed off campgrounds.
