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Pied Oystercatcher breeding season 2018

10,000 Birds

This year is the eighteenth year since we discovered our first Pied Oystercatcher nest on Cable Beach in Broome and it didn’t take us long to realise that they are not at all successful at raising young due to egg and chick predation. He last raised a chick successfully in 2016 and has nested in this area since 2008.

Breeding 100
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Pied Oystercatcher breeding update

10,000 Birds

Egg loss to predation has been extraordinarily bad this year and all of the nests mentioned in the last post were lost and all of the pairs of Pied Oystercatchers laid a new clutch of eggs. In fact they have not just laid once again, but many pairs have laid up to five clutches of eggs this season.

Breeding 139
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Birds and Us: A 12,000 Year History from Cave Art to Conservation–A Book Review

10,000 Birds

They may be about bird eggs ( The Most Perfect Thing: The Inside (and Outside) of a Bird’s Egg , 2016), or a 17th-century ornithologist ( Virtuoso by Nature: The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby, 2016), or How Bullfinches learn songs from humans ( The Wisdom of Birds: An Illustrated History of Ornithology.

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Pied Oystercatcher nesting

10,000 Birds

There are sixteen pairs of Pied Oystercatchers and they have varying success at raising young birds. To the north they are very unlucky with predation before the eggs even hatch out, but to the south the eggs hatch out and then the predation occurs on the chicks.

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Pied Oystercatcher breeding season starts early!

10,000 Birds

Traditionally since 2000 we have encountered our first Pied Oystercatcher eggs in the first week of July, but this year one pair have decided to start laying eggs early! Sadly they have already lost one clutch of eggs to predation, so by July 1st this year they are on their second clutch. Pied Oystercatcher nest.

Breeding 100
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The Common Cuckoo and The Evolution of Mimicry

10,000 Birds

In this way, the cuckolding Cuckoo can convince its cuckoldee, the Reed Warbler, to back off when the Cuckoo comes around, allowing the Cuckoo to toss out one of the Warbler’s eggs and replace it with one of its own, to be raised by the hapless Warbler parents. Science 3 August 2012: 578–580 a.

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Pied Oystercatcher parenting

10,000 Birds

After 28 days of sharing the duty of sitting on three eggs we finally had the arrival of our first Pied Oystercatcher chicks for 2012 on Friday August 3rd. It is unusual for three eggs to be laid here in Broome and many eggs do not even hatch due to predation each season.

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