Welcome
to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 10
Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds
The discovery of a rare spotless crake in distress in Kapiti’s
Coastland Mall complex brings to four the number of rare and threatened species
now known to be settled in this urban area. It joins parera, dabchick and
fernbird.
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| Spotless Crake on nest in Raupo (Courtesy NZ Department of Conservation) |
Like the endemic fernbird, which was rediscovered in the
Waikanae estuary and environs in 2012, spotless crakes are swamp dwellers and
notoriously difficult to find. They are rails, and share a cousinage with weka,
now pretty much extinct in the North Island, although efforts have been made to
reintroduce them. The rediscovery of the fernbird led to the location of a
small colony that, much to everyone’s surprise, had begun to find safe habitat
in the more open cleared areas, away from the wetland.
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| Hand held Spotless Rake (courtesy NZ Department of Conesrvation) |
Where there is one spotless crake there will surely be
more and a similar pattern of resettlement in response to human activity may be
occurring here. The Wharemauku and
its tributary drains run through the shopping complex and it is likely that
this dishevelled stray has come up from the creek and its surviving wetlands. If
so, it confirms that the creeks and drains in this area are used as passageways
by these wild animals from one rare surviving habitat area to another.
All this continues to show up the deplorable quality of
the NZTA’s scientific survey into the effect on native wildlife of the
expressway. There are no evaluation or management plans for parera, dabchicks, and now spotless crake,
though they will be carving an embanked 4 lane highway right through their surviving
habitat.
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