Christmas in New Zealand

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 128

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Pohutukawa - the New Zealand Christmas tree

With the best intentions in the world, we’ve stumbled in getting a couple of new posts up over the last two weeks. Blame Christmas for that so here is our seasonal montage to help make up for it. 

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These foto’s were taken this morning down, at our local beach village. There is a small public pond here, which is about to be ‘retired’ by Council (let’s not go there this time). It should be dry but is currently underwater because of our very wet Spring and early summer. And planted in pohutakawa.

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This is our local Xmas tree. The flowers are a little late this year, but still spectacular, especially in the first burst of their bloom.

Camoflaged down one end and at 9.10am (approx) we discovered  this white faced heron. 

White-faced heron

These are wild birds and it is rare to see them in town, though one used to be spotted down here if you kept yourself on the lookout  in the early morning.   

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This is a wild bird but so well camouflaged that people  passing within three feet never spotted him (we think a male given the splatter of colouring on the breast). 

Going

Going

Gone - Spot the heron!

He was motionless and busy fishing, probably on waterboatmen, a very small morsel, though it is surprising the marine and bird life that can frequent these ponds.

White-faced heron 

A couple of years ago an orphan scaup chick found its way in here and was adopted by a mallard with two other chicks to look out for.  That’s another story, but it shows that even these small very public ponds can play a role in supporting some of our rarer water birds. 

Christmas greeting to all our visitors and the best of all New Year's. 

Track we were listening to while posting this - Well, we are going for an outright shaming here in putting up WHAM.. remember this...from back in the 1980's...  

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart 

But the very next day, you gave it away 

This year, to save me from tears 

I'll give it to someone special-    

Environmental artist Jill Studd's blog

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Rare visit by Black-fronted Dotterel to Wharemauku M2PP NZ expressway bridge

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 127

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Black-fronted Dotterel

The best time for visiting wetland areas is very early morning and we were down at the now destroyed dune lake around 6.40am recently and sighted these rare visitors.

Dotterels sighted to right and outside bridge support

Our heart skipped a beat because they are easily mistaken at a distance, for one of New Zealand’s rarest birds – the shore plover, of which there are around 250 left in the world.

Shore Plover

A small population of these plovers has been settled on Mana Island just south of here. They sometimes visit the mainland and warnings go out to watch for them so we were hopeful they might have found their way north along the coast.  But it was not to be as DoC confirmed that these are Black-fronted dotterels, not that delicate and notably over-trusting species. (Like many NZ species they are not used to mammals and entire populations can be wiped out by just one rat –especially at nesting time).  

As you can see from this video these Australian immigrants are rather beautiful and endearing birds. They were first recorded in the 1950’s in Hawke’s Bay, (on the East Coast) then spotted breeding and have since begun a migration across the North Island and into the South. 

Female black fronted dotterel

This is the first time we have seen them here, though we spotted them on two different occasions, so perhaps they have now settled and will begin to breed.

Male Black-fronted dotterel

Unlike many dotterels, that usually set up shop close to estuary’s and the beach, these birds can be seen more usually inland, so only time will tell whether the settle to breed here.

Since expressway construction began we have seen major changes in the bird populations in this area. This sighting is a plus, but most have not been positive. The pukeko population, previously settled into around four or five groupings of 6-8 birds has been scattered far and wide and we have encountered only one chick this year. This was attended, very unusually, by only one adult female.  Seagulls which we never used to find here, now visit the area regularly (not a good thing), while duck, teal and shoveller populations have completely disappeared.  Like wise kahu (hawk) that used to patrol through the area have been giving it a wide birth.

We’ll cover this issue in more depth in a new post.

We would also note the continued silence around  the expressway opening.  Two months ago enthusiastic media releases put it six months ahead of schedule and expected it to open well before Christmas. This appears to have been over-sold with no opening date yet set. Meanwhile the traffic continues to jam up on Kapiti Road; so watch this space.

    

Track we were listening to while posting this…

We have been going with John Lennon melancholy all day and while we wanted to use -You’ve got to hide your love away, we finally went with  -If I fell. Thinking we better keep something in reserve for when this world really hits the skids.

If I fell in love with you

Would you promise to be true

And help me understand

Cos I've been in love before

And I found that love was more

Than just holding hands

Environmental artist Jill Studd’s Blog

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