Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 132
Actively
supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds
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| Shelter from the storm - a fledgling welcome swallow takes a breather |
The headline in today’s paper ‘Bummer of a Summer’ was not
designed to sell newspapers, but certainly sums up our summer. Every week a new front has
swept through, thwarting what should be the holiday season. It’s now only three
weeks to autumn and thursday
dawned promising enough, though the forecast said otherwise. Another storm was
steering through the centre of the country. By 10am it was drizzling; by lunchtime
it began to mean business. This weather was coming down from the nor’west, so it was
warm with it and forewarning gave us the opportunity to try and understand what
was happening to the wetland as our Wharemauku creek began to rise.
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| Midday and going down the gurgler. The Wharemauku begins to reverse flow, back into the wetland |
It got pretty rough out there through the afternoon -the
wind climbing to 60 knots and more, so picture quality from under a complaining
umbrella began to deteriorate, though here is a visual account of what happened
next.
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| Wetland West -This photo was taken after 20mm of rain. Backfilling of the wetland is just beginning |
Rainfall topped 60mm (3inches) over the next 9 hours. This was less than the
floods of September (110) and November (85), but the flooding nevertheless was
comparable. 30mm had fallen by 4.30pm, then 50mm as night began to fall. By
dawn it had topped at 60mm, but the
Wharemauku was still running high.
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| Wetland West around 5pm - after 30 mm |
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| Wetland west at 50mm and height of flood -7.30pm |
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| Wharemauku breaks its banks |
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| Same time from under the expressway bridge |
Similar flooding was occurring on the other side of the
expressway
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| Wetland East after 30mm around 5pm |
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| Spot the difference 3hours later -just before dusk. |
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| Wetland West -Dawn the next day after 60mm. |
We are beginning to form a picture of how this flooding is going to affect
this area. The Wharemauku was rising through the afternoon but it wasn’t until
rainfall hit 30mm that flooding became general through these areas. But this
happened very quickly after the rainfall topped 30mm. What has been surprising
is to see these two year floods occuring every two months. Though before the expressway drained the
area, the stopbanks would have
coped comfortably with this level of flooding.
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| Marooned - a lone pukeko makes a break fro higher ground |
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| Flood at its height from the other end of the wetland -bridge in far distance |
This area has been entirely transformed, and we still don’t know what the
long term effects will be. The ground level has been substantially lowered, perhaps
below the water table. It would normally be dry this time of the year and this
may have turned the area into a permanent year-round wetland. This is very good
news for our wetland birds who have already begun to descend on the area. In
the former dunelake there was a mixed population of 60-70 birds. On our morning
trip after the flood, we made a rough count of 130.
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| 38 ducks come into land on the now flooded plain. And this was only half of them. |
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| A new seasons gathering of paradise duck youngsters -putangitangi. And this was only half of them. (Grey Teal in front.) |
We don’t have the species variety
of the old swamp, but this may come over time as the area begins to look
uncannily like the original Wharemauku swamp of 120 years ago, minus the forest of course and with an
expressway, carving it in two.
Track we were listening too while posting this rebel song from
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem Kelly the Boy from Killane.
What winds
from the south brings a messenger
here
Of a hymn of
the dawn for the free
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