Update on rare crested grebe discovered at Kaiapoi

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 152

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

This story just got a lot more intriguing. 

We have been lucky to get actual photos of one parent (Crested Grebe), sitting on the floating nest over on the far side of the Kaiapoi lake (away from main road) and the mate out feeding. Difficult to know which is which from this distance as they share the nesting and the feeding.

Foto  Warwick Schulz

Foto Warwick Schulz

These shots were taken a week ago but since then the eggs have hatched and the youngsters can now be seen atop their parent’s backs out on the lake (no photos yet but we are keeping our fingers crossed for more).

The intrigue lies in the display seen during our early morning watch. We assumed this was a prelude to mating and the laying of the eggs, but these two are now outed as having been already a couple of  weeks into brooding on the nest. If they were human beings, we would characterise this as a playful early morning display of affection between committed partners, adept at sharing the load; and not an exhibition of behaviour, as our scientific jargon so presumptuously proclaims, solely aimed at ‘reinforcing a bond that will ensure the male's genes will survive him, while reassuring the female that he’ll hang around for the duration’.

So let's make our view very clear. These are emotionally complex and morally competent animals every bit as much as we strive to be; though in their very different way.

Now, how to put an end to all that spurious  tripe…?

Track we were listening to while posting this? Well it was Paul McCartney who knew the answer to this at 19, and  put it down in  Can’t Buy Me Love,  although Lennon must have helped put some backbone into these lyrics. This was the Beatles first big song out here in Aotearoa, in the days when we were pretty much cosseted away from the world as it was…

Say you don’t need no diamond ring

And I’ll be satisfied

Tell me you want those kind of things

That money just cant buy.

Jill Studd’s Blog

Contact Us