FLY MY PRETTY: Hoodie chick set to fly thanks to community support

THE Barwon Coast’s only surviving hooded plover chick this season has beaten all odds and is set to spread its little wings and fly this week.

The “hoodie” is a threatened coastal nesting bird species and only a few chicks manage to survive each year to the fledging (flying) stage.

To give the hooded plover chick the best chance of survival, Barwon Coast put a “Temporary Exclusion Zone” around the area where the chick was on Ocean Grove Main Beach.

This zone stays in place once the egg has hatched until the chick can fly.

A dedicated team of 21 Bird Life Australia volunteers have manned the beach near the exclusion zone, working in two hour shifts from dawn to dusk – a collective 420 hours.

The volunteers helped inform beach walkers about the hooded plover species and what they could do to help the chick survive.

Barwon Coast staff also lent assistance, maintaining the exclusion zone, putting chick updates signs at beach access paths and on social media.

“The support from the local community has been amazing,” Barwon Coast community liaison and education manager Maddie Glynn said.

“Once people know that human disturbance is one of the key threats to a chick’s survival, most people have been more than happy to walk around the Temporary Exclusion Zone via the inland path.

“We’d like to thank everyone who has done their bit to help this threatened species.”

Once the chick learns to fly it will stay on the Ocean Grove Main beach for another week or so to increase its strength.

“It is potentially another week until the chick fledges and takes off to start a new life,” she said.

“So, we ask the community to please continue to respect the volunteers and avoid the Temporary Exclusion Zone.”

The success of this chick has brought the numbers of fledglings between Breamlea and Point Lonsdale for this summer to five, with two more anticipated at Breamlea in the next couple of weeks. No breeding pairs along this 20 kilometre stretch of coast were successful in the 2016/17 summer.