Raumati Beach dune lake puts on its summer coat

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 4

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Dune lake looking south east towards Wellington – the native azolla water fern is responsible for the red hue

February 3^rd  and the business end of summer and finally we have a dry lake – looking very pretty  and green still, now that summer seems finally to have settled in. This is the first time we have been able to venture out here to picture the dry bed which is very soft and spongy.  Having taken the foto, the white faced heron, resident here since November, suddenly lifted her head out of the grass. She had swallowed something rather large that was taking some time to squirm down her throat. (Not a pretty sight!!) It was a surprise to get so close to her though she took off immediately we were spotted. Still, there must be food aplenty in the long grass.  

White-faced heron swallowing

The local birds are continuing to raise families here with a female Mallard seen two days ago, having left her nest and now making her way up the Wharemauku with four newly hatched chicks in tow, this late in the summer. These mother’s are nervous wrecks, constantly monitoring their vivacious youngsters. And then on this gorgeous sunny Sunday morning two young Welcome Swallows were spotted sitting on a ledge under the airport bridge having just fledged. Their mother was continuing to bring them tucker, while at the same time enticing them out into the air.

Welcome swallow fledglings

It was a nervous time because of the Sunday strollers with their dogs and bikes and cell phones, trampling across the bridge, though they remained blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding below. The swallows build nests up under the superstructure of the bridge, digging the mud out of the clay creek bank with their beaks. But the site is problematic, not simply because water seeps through onto the nests when it rains, but because it is a favourite Friday night refuge for teenage revellers and taggers.   The swallows remain very wary of human contact (unlike the NZ fantail-(piwakawaka) but also resourceful because this is the second nest that’s fledged here, this year.

The Blackberries are now thick with berries. Blackberry has been a noxious weed in NZ for many years having been brought over by the first Pakeha (non-Maori) immigrants. It was a great delicacy and early records show that the first plants sold for record prices. But it loved the climate and soon turned feral. At the dune lake however it has put itself to work, doing the job of a predator-free fence and is the primary reason why there are still so many wild birds down here in the centre of town. When the blackberry goes, so will the birds, because the locals with their dogs will get down to the water’s edge while domestic cats will have an open road into nesting areas. This is the bleak history of the wetland areas of the Coast where development has steadily gentrified the area in favour of introduced species, not only Mallards, plover, magpies and Canadian Geese, but cats, stoats, rats and rabbits. This has pushed our native birds, relentlessly toward local extinction, even where wetland ponds have been retained as water features.

 

So here’s to the Kapiti  blackberry. The berry’s are very late this year (blame the rain) so we’ve only just got our first jars of jelly bottled. The recipe is from Ghillie  James’ book, Jam, Jelly & Relish, mentioned here because Ghillie is Fran’s English cousin and the recipe comes from near Norwich (with its famous Broads). Here her Grandmother Pom, was born and raised, and Fran spent her childhood. But this is a pot of NZ jam and the blackberry is as English as we are – (ie, not at all).

Top Shelf - 2014's Blackberry Jelly