Oystercatcher Monitoring 2011


Sat, 02/05/2011 - 12:43 — ilona
 Date: 2011-01-04     2011-01-19  

 Nest

Eggs 

 Chicks

Eggs 

 Chicks

  3 

2 

- 

1 

- 

 1

 -

1 

- 

1 

 2

 2

-

1 

- 

 4

 -

- 

- 

- 

 5

 -

- 

2 

- 

 6

 2

- 

1 

- 

 7

 -

2

- 

2 

 8

 2

- 

2 

- 

 9

 2

- 

2 

- 

 10

 -

1

- 

1 

 11

 -

- 

- 

- 

 12

 -

-

2 

- 

 Total

 10

 4

11 

4 

     

Our African Black Oystercatchers are on the ENDANGERED SPECIES list!

“The Endangered Species Act serves as a biological half-way house, a protective legal custody for life-forms at risk of disappearing.  The purpose of the law is to protect species by identifying and then protecting their critical habitat.  The act has been controversial, not because it tries to save plants and wildlife but because it tries to save the habitat they need to survive.  Usually this means preventing humans from altering those ecosystems in any way.

The best measure of the act’s value is the very contention it causes, the fact that it helps us to see the unintended consequence of our actions.  It reminds us that simple economic decisions have to be considered within the greater economy of nature, where many lives are in the balance.

What saves species, in the end, is human restraint, the ability to balance our needs against the needs of the rest of the lives on this planet”.  (Extracts from Last One, Verlyn Klinkenborg, National Geographic, January 2009).
   Dana Bay Beach Users we NEED YOUR HELP!!!
 
Our current count:  8 Chicks and 2 eggs!!!  Let’s try to save these....

Please, if you go walking West of Second Beach, Dana Bay, inform other beach users:
 
• This is the first of two breeding seasons for our endangered Oystercatchers, unfortunately both coincide with school holidays – December & March.
• Animals and children need to be under control to ensure a successful season.
• 2008 was a disaster - not one chick survived.  Ten were hatched!
• These birds only feed twice a day at low tide.  If they are disturbed the chicks starve.
• Oystercatchers CANNOT swim, (they have no webbed feet), they are waders.
• If chicks are in the water it's because they have no place to hide and have been driven off the dunes by other predators/human disturbance (sandboarding).  They have
• probably been washed off the rocks by incoming waves.  Their future is drown or starve!
• This is unnatural forced behaviour to avoid starvation.
• DON'T take chicks home.  They will die.  They only eat rock and sand mussels.  These have to be fresh!
• Chicks hatch after an incubation period of 28-30 days.
• Only four out of 36 chicks reach adulthood.
• The African Black Oystercatcher is our Logo.

Kind regards
Conservancy Committee