Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds
It is
now officially Autumn, starting to get chilly in the morning and with the first
Southerly buster currently assaulting Christchurch and due here this evening,
the last thing you would expect would be a new dabchick family emerging from
a nest at the Waikanae lagoons.
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| Dabchick feeding youngster -Waikanae estuary March 4 |
Yet
here they are, pictured this morning. The chick has just been tipped off the
parent’s back and yet, full of fight and indignation, it took every opportunity
to climb back on. It’s endeavours were met with short shrift however as the
parents zipped around trying to keep it supplied with breakfast.
And
zip is the operative word. We were admiring how shags could rocket around underwater
last week, but dabchicks leave them standing. It’s impossible to keep a camera
on their track, unless they’re close to the surface, where you can see they
have an ability to change direction, and accelerate while doing it, that is
quite alarming.
Meanwhile
the chick had picked all this up just by watching. At the point when it first, suddenly
disappeared under water, we became seriously alarmed, thinking an eel might
have got hold of it especially as the mother, settled nearby and watching it
all, looked even more alarmed. Though everything settled back into order when the little one came up a good 20 metres (and 30 seconds) behind her.
 |
| Weweia takes a dive -March 4 |
What
the camera revealed was that it had in fact dived – though it was a clumsy
first attempt –a belly flop. Still, once underwater, there was no stopping
it.
All of which augurs well for the local survival of this nationally threatened species
though we won’t of course, be seeing them, like this one, right in the centre
of town on the dune lake once the expressway has eviscerated this wetland.
 |
| Male dabchick at the Raumati Beach dune lake -Sept 24 2013 |
Anyone interested in an independent view of expressway developments in Kapiti could follow Bianca Begovich at www.kapitiindependentnews.net.nz
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