And, just like that, it’s gone. I’m sad to report that Plover Park’s first Oystercatcher nest is already lost, less than 24 hours since it was laid.
As to the cause, there wasn’t much evidence. No eggshells or debris, no obvious, fresh predator tracks… just gone. And AMOY have a habit of making determining the cause of nest loss even more difficult by trampling all over the remaining nest bowl, as if they’ve been frantically pacing back and forth trying to find the egg they knew should be there somewhere. They certainly did that here.
While on the one hand that egg was full of all the hope of the season, we are only just getting started. That hope is not lost. More eggs will be laid, and more eggs will be lost. Eggs are part of a numbers game. New eggs represent probabilities of happy outcomes. And losing the first egg is not necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps they were just incredibly unlucky, but its more likely they picked a bad spot and need to choose a better spot to try again. That’s probably what they are doing right now. It is part of the beach nesting process.
It’s far better to lose the first egg of the first nest than to lose the whole nest after weeks of incubating and right before it is supposed to hatch.
It’s still sad, but it is more frustrating. I’m sure they don’t want to start over, and neither do I. If they’ve learned anything from this, their next egg is probably going to be a lot harder to find!
And while I don’t look forward to it, that’s a good thing.
Say something kind