The best Christmas video of the Year

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 150

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Here’s a fantasy run of video and fotos of park animals taken in Botswana and Namibia earlier in the year that we’ve been saving up for Xmas.

A big thankyou to Bill and Jen Studd They need no further explanation…

Merry Xmas to our growing body of fans and we’ll get back to wetland business in the new year…

Rare and endangered NZ Dotterel found breeding in Kapiti Estuary

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 149

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

This post is for Jean - who passed away Wednesday night...

Waikanae Estuary endangered Northern NZ Dotterel
Dom Post -foto Roger Smith

We are sweltering through our driest and hottest spring ever, with late summer (February) arriving in November. The blue skies are never ending, with not a sign of rain for at least another week (which is about as far as forecasters can see ahead). 

Raumati Beach Blue

This is the exact opposite of last year where rain drenched the region and wrecked the summer entirely.

So is this big dry affecting bird migration patterns?

For the first time the endangered NZ dotterel has not only been sighted just north of here at the Waikanae estuary reserve, but also nesting. In fact the nest, discovered by local conservationists, has 6 eggs which indicates there may be two females sharing maternal duties.     

6 egg nest in sand  Dom-Post Roger Smith  

There is a colony of the more common banded dotterels at this reserve, but these NZ dotterels are usually only found on the East Coast north of Auckland, then the Chatham Islands; so this is exciting news for local conservation, especially if a colony forms from here. 

Like many  endangered NZ birds these animals do not have an innate fear of mammals, so this is a difficult environment to bring up the youngsters. 

Seriously at risk - a NZ dotterel chick

DoC sign     Dom-Post

The nest is set in open sand, and vulnerable to dogs and DoC has been quick to secure the site with signs. The reserve borders an urban area however and there are many other predators, including rats, stoats, cats and then spur-winged plover and kahu (Australasian harrier); so the odds are stacked against survival. Much better if they had settled on predator free Kapiti or Mana Islands. (On Mana there is a colony of even rarer shore plover). 

What is fascinating however, is to see two females sharing the nest, yet it is difficult to establish exactly what is going on. Pukeko share nesting duties, and in a whanau (wider pukeko family), headed by an alpha female it is often a male who is sitting on the nest. 

Laysan Albatross

There is a wonderful story about the Laysan albatross colony on Hawaii. These are Northern Pacific migrants but sometimes they stray down here. For years the birds had been studied by male ornithologists who built a mythology around the monogamy of pairs who appeared to mate for life. Then one of the first women to study the birds (in the 1980’s) discovered that (whoops) , around 30% of the pairs (on Oahu Island) were female/female pairs sharing custody of the nest. The females wander off for insemination, then  back to their life partner. Why this is remains mysterious, though perhaps a female partner makes a more reliable  nurturing mate - or perhaps again (like us) some are just gay by nature.

The story  makes clear just how  little we know about the animals we share the planet with.

Finally some more news about the M2PP expressway. Our early post has been confirmed with the NZTA now digging up, not 3 km of brand new roadway but 14 km, half of which apparently the taxpayer has to stump up the cash for. Though we have little information about what is causing this problem, and if indeed, resealing will fix it. It’s become clear since the election, (as we suspected) - that the previous Government has been championing the cause of private over public transport and sitting on information that doesn’t support their view. Patronage of local trains is growing rapidly and new figures out from the Regional Council reveal that rush hour traffic has actually slowed since the opening of the expressway. What we need now are more frequent services during peak times, and larger ‘park and ride’ areas to cope with growing demand…   

Track we were listening to while posting this – Well, the bee’s are in the lavender, the puawhanaga (native clematis) is climbing our kowhai, the red currants are dripping with fruit (3 weeks early), potatoes dug for Xmas (4 weeks early) and now sitting back here as the sun refuses to give way to the evening and Susie just brought me a beer. So the music has got really sloppy – it’s The Springfields from 1962 – Dusty leading all the way out to the Island of Dreams. And there it is 5km across our Strait (Kapiti Island). Wish you were here...  

I wander the streets

And the gay crowded places

Trying to forget you

But somehow it seems

That my thoughts ever stray

To our last sweet embraces

Over the sea on the island of dreams

Environmental artist Jill Studd’s blog

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Nesting pied shags on Kapiti Coast New Zealand

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 148

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Mum settles down...

Today a quick note, plus video on a pied shag colony 30 km north of here established in the macrocarpa at Waikawa Beach. This beach is famous as the bolt hole of provocative early Labour Minister of Public Works ‘Red’ Bob Semple, so first things first –

 Bob Semple in Nov 1911  an early Labour rally in Auckland  

For those not currently up with the state of political play in New Zealand and who have been patiently ‘watching this space’  as advised, we do have a new Labour-led coalition Government which includes the Greens.

 96 years later and here she goes - Jacinda Ardern PM

It is very early days but a first big test is on the horizon with the Climate Change conference about to get underway in Bonn Germany. PM Jacinda Ardern and James Shaw – leader of the Greens have both attended in the past and Fiji is providing leadership, so we are expecting major support for ‘at risk’ Pacific nations to emerge from this new Government, which early declared its serious concern about the Planet's slide into global warming.    Now back to the shags…

Growing chick with parent regurgitating

This pied shag colony along the Waikawa stream is only three or four years old, but growing steadily and we were lucky to be able to catch some film of the nests of  parents with their young. We had to film from a distance, then through tangled branches so apologise in advance for the quality – but here are youngsters being fed and parents swapping over nest sitting duties. 

There are at least two chicks in each nest, one of which is rather larger than the others and busy copping the lions share of the regurgitated food.

Pied shags, our largest shag, are coastal birds that feed in the sea and estuary. They had a bounty on their head in the 1940’s when their numbers plummeted. There is still surprisingly little information about how they are faring nationwide with population estimates varying between 1000 and 5000, though they are thought to be in decline. They appear stable on this coast however and our marine reserve must be a big help in growing this local population.  The major threat is from continued shooting, the deliberate destruction of nesting sites and net fishing.  The experience of two locals shows why. 

Pied shag in Waikawa stream

They were visiting the colony and found a bird enmeshed in a net set right below it. They jumped into the creek to free the bird but found it so thoroughly entangled they had to send home for a knife in order to cut it free. The bird fortunately, was no worse for her ordeal but not at all thankful for its rescuers. It bit the finger of one, causing blood to flow and when released dived down and bit his toe. First aid had to be rendered to the rescuers and the safest way to hold it (to protect themselves) was by the scruff of the neck. On this evidence the future of this bird looks assured!
  

Midnight Collective Conservation Order of the Month goes to those two who cut up the net then advised the authorities. 

Track we were listening to while posting this was Fats Domino's Blueberry Hill, 89 years old when he passed away last Thursday (our time). If you are a Treme fan you would have seen him as a highlight of  Series 3, at his house, post-Katrina, playing the piano, looking all sorts of worn, but still with those magic New Orleans fingers playing over the keys. 

The wind in the willow played

Love's sweet melody

But all of those vows you made

Were never to be

Environmental artist Jill Studd's blog

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Pollution at Kapiti wetland - the continuing story

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 147

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Still mucky after all these weeks

We have taken a while to follow this up because we have been away on a jaunt. However we pursued this pollution story with the Regional and District Councils and here are the results; Regional Council first.

The investigative officer sent our photographs to their science lab, who came back to them (a week later) with a definitive judgement (from the photographs), that this was a natural phenomena, a reaction of bacteria to ferrous iron, that sometimes occurs in recently disturbed waterways. It was therefore not a pollutant issue. We had also consulted the District Council who filed a similar story, having obviously been in contact with them.

Naturally stagnant? - Is this now a permanent feature of our wetland? 

There are issues around this that need to be brought out into the open. No-one from either of these organisations carried out a site inspection, so no water samples were taken to confirm the judgement. The Regional Council is based in Wellington  an hour away. This travel time and expense seems now to be factored into their decision making. It also confirms that much of their work day is spent in the office talking to their laptops. This has not gone unnoticed by people we have talked to on-site. ‘They’re all just academics,’ was one caustic response. None of this decision-making took into account the fact that the pollution appeared to start around the dumped rubbish and oil cans, then flush out into the wetland. The District Council said they would send someone down to clean up this mess. A month later it still hasn’t happened.

Now you see it.

Now you see it (Month later)

We have had above average rainfall over the last few weeks which should have flushed the area but this ‘non-pollution’ is now spreading, leaving wider areas stagnant.

The NZTA is still working in the area, reinforcing the drainage banks, so the area isn’t draining the way it was designed to; though, needless to say, none of this shemozzle is filtering into the news media.

Wetland beside rebanked drain 

Putangitangi female left high and dry

And this work appears very ad hoc, drying up the wetland at a time when it is usually at its peak. This is a worry for nesting birds like pukeko and pied stilt which rely on the water to safeguard their nests and their youngsters. Yet there seem very few nesting birds down here. We’ve spotted a couple of ducklings and two pukeko chicks at a time when there are usually three or four broods of both. 

Mallard chick - all alone am I!

Pukeko chick - all alone am I 2!

No pied stilt so far and no paradise duck broods. Though a couple of spurwinged plover pairs are skulking around (these self-introduced  predators feed upon native eggs and chicks).

Coastal wetland areas (pakihi) are notoriously difficult to define however, for they change from season to season. And it is still early days in the life of this one so let's finish on a positive  note. Every year NZ holds a kereru count (these birds are crucial for spreading large forest tree seeds). There are populations in the Tararua forests around here but we have never seen them down on the coast, so imagine our delight when for the first time one gate crashed our kowhai.

Here’s the video

But what is going on? Tui numbers have been up again this year and it’s possible that the tuis are dragging curious kereru in their wake. 

A kereru in a kowhai tree

Tui - ditto repeato

Kereru also feed on kowhai, but on leaves not flowers. Another native bird that has been spotted locally though we haven’t seen her yet, is our endangered native falcon – karearea. And she may also be following the tuis. One was apparently spotted chasing a tui away from a feed in a back garden; though we need photographs to confirm this.

Track we were listening to while posting this - well it had to be, Halloween drawing ever closer on our luxurious spring parade

I was working in the lab late one night

When my eyes beheld an eerie sight

For my monster from his slab began to rise

And suddenly to my surprise

He did the mash

He did the monster mash

The monster mash

It was a graveyard smash

He did the mash

It caught on in a flash

He did the mash

He did the monster mash

with thanks to Bobby (Boris) Pickett from 1962...

Environmental artist Jill Studd's blog

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Breaking news - Pollution contaminates Kapiti wetland at M2PP Expressway

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 146

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

A walk around our wetland on Sunday morning pinpointed a serious contamination of  the area recently excavated for the M2PP expressway. This is on the eastern boundary of the wetland close to town and had been leaking out into two small ponds close to the fence.  Here are the pictures.

This was originally a drain that came from a sewerage holding tank in Rata Road, the road that runs along the eastern side of the wetland. However closer inspection ruled the tank out as the culprit and revealed a dumped chillybin as the source of the contamination.

Someone has backed their ute up and fired the bin into the waterway.

Previously this would have found its way into the Wharemauku stream but the reconstruction of this area means that it is now dissipating through the wetland. This will already have affected the marine life in the area, and also this male putangitangi (paradise duck). 

He’s been hanging around here for a while which indicates he has a mate sitting on her nest close by.  

The responsible authority is the Greater Wellingon Regional Council (GWRC) and they have been very responsive to communication, firing off the emails and phoning through, but three days later are yet to undertake a site visit. 

We will be keeping you posted on developments.

Meanwhile we were pleased to see a story surface in the local newspaper Kapiti News, confirming our investigation of the breakup of the bitumen surface of the M2PP expressway. Repairs were now underway on 3.2 kilometres of the six months old highway. This leaves a lot of questions unanswered… Here are  some of them- 

  

Who is paying for these repairs? Is the water seepage a result of laying bitumen in inappropriate weather during our wet summer? Was this the result of government pressure to get the expressway open? Has the water seepage penetrated into the embankments of this sandhills highway? Why are there potholes now appearing in the cycleway? Who is paying for repairing these? Why were a number of senior managers recently ‘let go’ from the NZTA? The vapid response of the NZTA makes it unlikely we’ll get answers to these questions, but at least we’re still able to pose them.

Track we were listening to while posting this? It’s that great old Ella Fitzgerald standard  My Happiness… 

Whether skies are gray or blue

Any place on earth will do

Just as long as I'm with you

My happiness

It doesn’t get any better than this…

Environmental artist Jill Studd's blog

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New Zealand Expressway continues to deteriorate -an update on M2PP

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 145

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Mr Joyce's dark legacy? M2PP bridge over the Wharemauku frames the gash in the Tararuas over looking Kapiti from where fill was quarried for the expressway.  

If you aren’t local, then you probably don’t know that we are in the middle of an election campaign. What is so unexpected is that there appears to be a radical electoral swing underway, bringing us back from laissez-faireism. It is way to early to call, though one indicator may be the lack of Government media blowhard stories on this expressway, compared with the last election, which pumped out around 5 in the last two weeks before voting. 

The only stories coming out on the Expressway highlight tarmac break up and repair, and information around this is thin on the ground; so we took another ride down to see what we would find.

Well, the cones are out (above), so repair work is underway, yet most of this still seems to be around assessment of how serious and widespread the problem is and it certainly has accelerated since our last foray on June 7. We saw new damage on the lanes going north from Kapiti Rd and much bigger holes in the lanes going the other way…

Once again it is dangerous to dawdle along this highway so these shots were taken on the fly, and don’t give a clear idea of just how corrugated these areas are becoming. The inside track is the most cut up, though the outside is also beginning to deteriorate. The suspicion is that this is coming from trucks slowing and accelerating into and out of the Kapiti off-ramp. 

One thing we will be able to rely on is that no major work will be started before the election, though if the tide continues to swarm this woman’s way…

Jacinda Ardern - The next PM of NZ?

Then we might get access to the full story after that…So watch this space!

But we are running a conservation blog and so here are some birds to prove the fact.

Skylark - early spring

This is an English immigrant, a skylark, and there are four birds down at the Wharemauku, though they don’t seem yet to have sorted out who they are going to pair up with.

One of our native birds on the increase is the tui and we’ve had up to four in our kowhai trees this year. They are very fierce and love a good fracas, but this one is sitting in a budding Japanese cherry, beside a flowering kowhai, singing for dear life. 

Tui

We can't know why, but possibly she was calling others to the tree that she then dived into. They extend their feathery tongues down into the flowers syrup, and then tear the flowers to pieces; then  come back, two or three times a day, careering round the tree like children on a sugar high.    

And finally, fantail-piwakawaka. They are too lively to photograph, but  can you spot the uncooperative little blighter in this one?  

Track we were listening to today… Well, has to be the Jacinda Anthem put out by Tony Bellus in April 1959 -Robbin’ the Cradle

They say I'm robbin the cradle, little darlin

Because I've fallen in love with you

They say I'm robbin the cradle, little darlin

Is it strange for true love to be so young

Environmental artist Jill Studd’s blog

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