Twitchers across the globe watched on live as two rare eastern osprey chicks hatched overnight, in a nest perched on a disused barge at Port Lincoln — but they despaired to see two other eggs snatched by a predator under cover of darkness.
A security camera captured a fox taking two eggs from a nest on the Tumby Bay conservation island last night.
The nests — one on a barge, the Tumby Bay nest and one at Thistle Island south of Port Lincoln — are under surveillance 24/7.
The cameras were set up by the Forster family to help gather information to keep the species alive.
South Australia was estimated to only have 40 to 50 remaining pairs of eastern ospreys.
Citizen scientist and birdlife photographer Fran Solly said while the bird enthusiasts were excited to see the two chicks hatch this morning, the euphoria was tainted by the loss of two others.
"In the space of five minutes … a fox just climbed up the nest and took the eggs which is just heartbreaking really," Ms Solly said.
"We've gone from absolute highs seeing two chicks born on the barge, to the absolute depths of devastation seeing a fox take two eggs from the Tumby Bay island nest.
"It's just so sad.
"We put a camera on there last year simply because we thought there should have been chicks there … and didn't really see any evidence of a fledgling in the area — so we didn't know what had happened.
"There was a lot of supposition of whether it was human encroachment, whether it was white-bellied sea eagles.
Fox baiting this week
Ms Solly said National Parks officers were going to bait for foxes this week.
The citizen scientists were focussing on the barge chicks' progress and waiting for a third egg to hatch.
The project's Port Lincoln Osprey Facebook page received messages of congratulations this morning from all over the world including Italy, Korea, Japan, Russia and Canada.
"It was a bit like waiting outside a labour ward – a bit past 10 o'clock last night the chick hatched from the egg and at the time we could see the hole in the second egg: We could see the chick moving," Ms Solly said.
"That took a bit over another four hours."
The community-driven project tagged one of the fledglings from the barge nest with a satellite tracker which tracks its daily movements.
Ms Solly said the monitoring was a gamer-changer.
"It's just re-writing the books on what we know about osprey so that information and really important information that we get from the general public about where they're seeing osprey, what behaviour they're observing.
