Birdwatchers from around the world have celebrated the arrival of a rare eastern osprey chick in South Australia.
Fran Solly, secretary of the Friends of Osprey conservation group, says everyone in Tumby Island and Port Lincoln knows about the chick that hatched last Thursday. But the livestream has captivated bird watchers from as far away as the UK, America, South Korea and Russia.
Video broadcast across Facebook and YouTube showed the new chick hatching on a specially built platform on Tumby Island.
“People are absolutely thrilled and enormously protective,” Solly said.
In South Australia, the eastern osprey is classified as endangered. The state has less than 50 breeding pairs, and recent surveys point to a rapid decline in the population of the species.
The government set up the Osprey and White-bellied Sea Eagle recovery plan in 2022, and the Friends of Osprey group followed. Conservation efforts have included setting up 14 artificial nesting platforms across the state.
“We knew that a big part of the problem for osprey in South Australia was not having a suitable location to nest,” Solly said. “They were trying to nest in all sorts of places that weren’t suitable.”
“Anybody who has been following this channel for a while knows the story of the Tumby Bay Island nest,” Solly said, referencing the time a fox took two eggs from the nest in 2021.
The island’s shallow tide makes it easy for foxes to swim across from the mainland.
“Now, we have a chick on Tumby Island,” Solly said. “Which is just fantastic news, because it means the platform is working.”
Viewers from around the world help with monitoring the stream.
A computer engineer from the Netherlands “just popped up last year and said, hey can I help”, Solly said. “He’s on there every day.”
Others spend days and nights recording things like how much each chick is being fed at the Port Lincoln nest.
“They are all really adding to the science,” Solly said. “It is just amazing.”
