Almost time to sign off for the season

Here we are at week seven for the chick. We had 30 days as an egg, 6 weeks on legs, and now 1 week where wings are gaining strength.

Swimming is no longer a part of the chick’s journey each day. Mid way through this week it was still doing one way of the trip swimming across the lagoon.

This then changed to trying to get the chick to fly both ways. There was one trip where the parents flew the chick across to the mangroves when it was still quite deep over there. They left the chick on the other side and flew back to the beach. The chick was really confused, calling and pacing, before swimming back to the beach as it could not take off from chest deep water. The chick was permitted to rest on the beach before flying back to the mangroves an hour later.

Today, for the first time, the parents took the chick down to the tidal flats outside Fishermans Bay for a feed. It is certainly going to learn what a dog is while feeding down there. They still have the chick around the mangroves at Bonnievale just before high tide. They then fly it over to the beach and they still make it fly to the mangroves after roosting.

We had some fisher people set up on the beach with around 12 lines out. They were certainly reeling in the kayakers, with a lot of colourful language each time a kayaker caught the lines. Not sure what they were going to do with the fish at the end of the day. None of them were very big and were left out on the sand, rather than thrown into the esky.

There was a local walking his dog on the Spit when the oystercatcher family was feeding on the Fishermans Bay tidal flats and I let him know Council does not permit dogs on the beach or tidal flats at any time. His comeback: “Why not”. As the family was only 100 metres away, digging away in the tidal flats for food, I was able to show him “Why not”.

I did learn that because of where and how I’ve placed the “No Dogs” signs, which are half way along the Spit, people seem to think they should not walk past the signs with their dog, but the area before the signs (the northern end) they think is ok.

Apart from Australia Day, where we need to keep the mass of people that descend on the Spit from going too close to the fence during high tide roost time, our job is done.

What a truly amazing time it has been. I’ve learnt so much. I’ve met so many wonderful people that would regularly stop by and ask how things were progressing and received so much thanks for the work we’ve done.

I will do an Australia Day update, but it looks like we’ve signed off for the season.

I will look into organising a BBQ for us all to reflect on what we’ve achieved. We have a lot of volunteers that haven’t actually met each other because they were on different shifts so it would be wonderful to have everyone together at one time.