One of the pairs of Pied Oystercatchers on Cable Beach have hatched their eggs this week. There had been one egg in the nest scrape on July 25th and a second egg followed. This Tuesday I was expecting the eggs to start to hatch and they did just that. As you can see in the header photo the nest was in a very exposed area, but it was back from high tide and had survived for twenty nine days. I showed you the variation in some of our location of Pied Oystercatcher nest sites a few weeks ago here. Both of the Pied Oystercatchers took it in turns to incubate the eggs and we have had cold nights and hot days, so there has been the need for warmth and shade over that period of time.
Shading two eggs
By Friday morning the family of Pied Oystercatchers had moved a little to the south to an area with more vegetation, but equally far from the ocean. The adults were clearly finding food for the chicks in the soft sand and feeding them. There are quite a lot of Black Kites in the area and they fly up and chase them off if they come too close. The Pied Oystercatcher chicks are spoken to by their parents and you can clearly hear them call them to move on when they collapse onto the sand for a rest. The chicks almost disappear in the vegetation and under their parents.
Pied Oystercatcher family
At one point one of the chicks wandered off to sit next to some grey vegetation. The sunlight just gave it away, though, with the light on its little shape!
Pied Oystercatcher chick with a sunlit edging!
There are a lot of weeks ahead before these Pied Oystercatcher chicks are old enough to fly and be safe from the many predators along our coastline. We are more than happy to observe them get to this stage of development and hope that their parents can protect them until they are fully fledged.
Hi Clare
I’ve been reading your posts on the pied oystercatchers. So exciting to see chicks. I was wondering if you’ve ever known of them nesting inland. We have a pair that are nesting in our yard. We are only 100 metres from the water. We first noticed them last November (2021) when we returned home from two weeks away and found them on a nest with 2 eggs, near our house (10metres) on a rocky patch.
This year they have returned. They have been feeding all around the house yard for about six weeks and we’ve been watching them fluff up, my husband thinks he saw them mating. Im sure I watched them scraping a nest. They are not scared of the mower(we are very careful), or of our dog, who looks out for them – sit on veranda and watches them. This morning I found one egg in a nest out the front about 40metres from house. Different spot to last year. By late afternoon it was gone. I was devastated but we do have crows around and a Nankeen Kestrel that roosts around the house.
Any advice, thoughts etc would be appreciated.
Love how much you know about these amazing birds.
I should have mentioned that last years 2 eggs were abandoned and we don’t understand what happened there. One night around 3am we heard a huge squawking noisy fight and next day they came back and yelled at each other – one pecking the other, then they flew off and never came back.
Kind Regards
Berni
Hi Berni,
You don’t say where you live, but they do nest away from the coast in some places. It sounds like you could have lost the eggs to Crows, Ravens or foxes if they are around your area. Do you have an area you could mount a camera to see what goes on? You could maybe erect some protection around the nest in the future depending on the culprit.
In 2008 this pair above didn’t sit on their eggs at all. It was as if they knew they needed to mate and lay, but not what to do next! They now know to incubate and try their best to raise their young. They often chase off other Pied Oystercatchers.