The Breeding Season 2 - More good news from our New Zealand Wetland

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 130

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Squadron of mallard ducks western side of the expressway

What it doesn’t pay to do in conservation, is try and second guess nature and we’ve been caught doing just that. No sooner had we registered our  concern about the disappearance of ducks from this area than a squadron turned up. This was late Friday afternoon, down at the far end of  the western side of the wetland. We couldn’t get too close, but they were primarily new generation mallards without their mature colouring, their mothers still in tow.

These protected grey teal (adolescent in front) still loose 6%
of their number during the duck shooting season 

Mixed in with them however was another good news story, a family of grey teal. You can tell teal apart from ducks, not only because they are smaller and differ in colouring, but the parents stay together through the breeding season. So if you see two together with youngsters they are usually teal. We have seen this  behaviour also in our very rare and endangered native duck -parera, but mallard mums all go solo at nesting time.

Grey teal

We remain mystified by our summer weather. It appears as if spring has simply carried on though January with a series of southerly fronts steaming across these islands during what should be beach ball weather.  Another 20 mls of rain again last night (with winter snow on South Island ski fileds), has marred the holidays of many, but is great news for the wetland. It is carrying a lot of water for this time of year, when it is usually drying up.

Royal spoonbill eyeing up a young mallard male

It is also regularly attracting this royal spoonbill. He is surprisingly dirty however which is a bit of a worry because it usually indicates a sick animal.

Royal spoonbill shaking out

In our last post we featured three pied stilt chicks which were first observed in mid-November, so are pleased to report that all three have survived and are now starting to put on their mature coats. 

Pied stilt chick - mid-November

Nearly there. -Pied stilt chick mid-January

And another...

And another

They are domiciled on the eastern side of the expressway and still under the care of their parents.

Finally a couple of shots of pukeko from the Ratanui wetland about 4 km away. 

Whoops - pukeko takes guard...

It is always difficult, and often  foolhardy to try and fathom odd  animal behaviour, especially when it is difficult telling the males from the females. When this pukeko  kicked up a  fuss as we tripped over each other, however our curiosity was aroused. Sure enough, shortly after, a companion came barrelling out of the brush, did a double take at the intruder and headed off in the opposite direction. 

Pukeko interrupted. They carry food like this holding it with a clawed
foot, while stripping the succulent juice. But this is a dry twig. 

She was carrying a large dry sprig  in her beak (you can tell the genders apart by the shape of their beaks but we're nt absolutely sure about these two, as the males usually do most of the sitting on the eggs ); so our surmise is that they had begun to build a nest; probably their second this year.     

self-explaining

With the entire globe getting out on the street to register its communal anxiety about what’s going on in the US, we were playing a song for our times in support of that while we posted this – Frank Zappa and the Mothers…   Trouble Coming Everyday

Well I'm about to get up sick

From watchin my t.v.

Been checkin' out the news

Until my eyeballs fail to see

I mean to say that every day

Is just another rotten mess

And when it's gonna change, my friend

Is anybody's guess

So I'm watching and I'm waiting

Hopin' for the best

Even think I go to praying

Every time I hear them sayin'

That there's no way to delay

That trouble comin' everyday

Environmental artist Jill Studd's blog

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The Breeding Season– The continuing story of a New Zealand dunelake

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 129

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Very early morning at a now gentrified dune lake - after flood

First of all – we would like to send New Year greetings to our visitors; and what a pleasure  to find so many of you, both here and around the world, taking a keen interest in our little conservation drama.

With a little more time on our hands we can now review the spring/summer activity of our local birds around our former dunelake. This has been a very disrupted time with earthmoving activity constant through the period. Then major flooding in September and November would have inundated nesting sites. There has been a serious reduction in species variety and numbers, but some surprising discoveries too.

Now rare - mallard family on the Wharemauku Usually we would have
6-10 nests. This year we have seen two - both on the Wharemauku.  

First to the birds we no longer see. Our biggest concern has been the sharp reduction of ducks including parera, parera-cross, mallards, shovelers and teal.  No sign also of white faced heron, nor have we heard frogs this year, although they are making plenty of noise at Andrew’s pond, a valued wetland about half a kilometre to the north. Here the birds are often fed by the public, but few pukeko and no ducks came out during our visits. There has also been a drop in the scaup population through the District, although the dabchicks seem to be holding their own in the Waikanae estuary and at the Ratanui wetland.

Putangitangi - with five chicks - at Wharemauku bridge

The first chicks to come out on the Wharemauku were putangitangi - our paradise ducks. We haven’t seen a brood  here since 2011 so were delighted to spot two this year; one in relative safety on the Western side of the expressway, while the other came out on the Wharemauku creek beside the new bridge. 

Putangitangi youngsters near fledging

Within three days the parents had moved this family to safer ground in the west as well. Here something happened that we’ve only seen occurring with pukeko, for the two broods appeared to merge together. These birds fledged safely, and then a month later seemed to return for a brief stopover. 

A squadron of adolescent visitors - early January 2017

The fledged youngsters of putangitangi appear to gather in ever growing social squadrons over summer and thirteen of these adolescents were spotted flying in.

Day old pied stilt youngster

More surprisingly, we picked out two broods of pied stilt. We hadn’t seen the nests (a good thing, because they are vulnerable to spurwinged plover and pukeko attack out in the open), but these youngsters came out within a day of each other. One, with two chicks, was in the area east of the expressway close to town, while the other near the north end of the new bridge, reared one youngster. 

Male pied stilt protecting youngster (white blob in background)

That's close enough!!! A male pied stilt defending his chick.

The males in particular are very active in confronting intruders and this is a giveaway for the family. The parents soon took the youngsters into safer territory and out of our view, but the males were still actively patrolling for intruders, so the youngsters appear to have thrived.

Male pied stilt on patrol 1

Coming in for a closer look - male pied stilt 2

One big surprise is the drop in the pukeko population. These birds gather together in the autumn where up to 30 might be seen grazing; then split up again to form communities of 5 to 8 birds. They share nests and nurturing of the young and are usually headed by a matriarch. They can foster  two broods  a year, through summer. 

Pukeko and young.

This year we spotted one lone chick being tended by a lone adult, presumably female. This is a striking departure from their normal behaviour, though the chick appeared to survive.

It is very early days in the settling down of these cleared areas, which are weeding back very rapidly. And, with the high rainfall, (20mls again last night!), the areas remain very waterlogged for this time of year. This is promising and brings the hope that this area might  begin attracting back, some of our missing birds.

Royal Spoonbill on eastern side of expressway

And here’s another hopeful sign - a Royal Spoonbill surveying the changed habitat.  

Meanwhile the globe holds its breath (well, we certainly are),  as the former centres of our democratic world, the UK and the US, pull up their respective sticks and head out into the wilderness… So rather than put a track out for this post, we’re sending this short extract from the combustible pen of Norman Mailer. This from his  comic classic of disturb, 1968’s -Armies of the Night.  We’re hoping it’s not a presentiment.

 How much of Fitzgerald’s long dark night may have come from that fine winnowing sense in the very fine hairs of his nose that the two halves of America were not coming together, and when they failed to touch, all of history might be lost in the divide. Yes, there was a dark night if you had the illusion you could do something about it, and the conviction that not enough had been done. Or was it simply impossible – had the two worlds of America drifted irretrievably apart.

Environmental artist Jill Studd’s blog

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