Welcome to the Midnight
Collective Broadsheet 160
Actively
supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds
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| Pārera -NZ Grey Duck |
We got out early this
morning, after a turbulent southerly had swept through in the passed couple of
days, and to our great surprise spotted these two Pārera ducks pretty much
straight away.
They aren’t near the
expressway which has (at least for the moment) lost the rich community of
native bird life that used to be here; but we’re keeping the location Mum –
because there’s a chance these two might be nesting.
The female was leading the
way into the undergrowth, with a bemused male tagging along behind. They appear
to be young birds and are fit and healthy, but the females are notoriously
dilatory in selecting a nesting site, so she may very well clear out again.
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| Telltale green colour under wing |
The story of why this duck is
critically endangered has been told here before. Mallards were originally
introduced from the UK, but this was stopped when they were found to interbreed
with the native duck. There were originally large colonies of pārera in this
area. There are records of up to 20,000 out on the strait between here and the
island (Kapiti) in the 1920’s but these had been shot out by the early 1930’s
and intensive lobbying of the Government allowed the wholesale introduction of
US mallards. 30,000 were eventually released. These birds can migrate to
Australia and the Pacific Islands so what was a local catastrophe has become a
regional one.
This migration probably
explains the origins of these two. We have seen pārera here before though not
recently, so it’s a great pleasure to welcome these two back…
Here is a short film we made
of the two disappearing up into the scrub near here.
Track we were listening to
while posting this – Well, we blew our cover last week with Patti Page so we’re
going for broke today with Slim Whitman and this pearler from 1954 Rose Marie –
I´m always dreaming of you
No matter what I do, I can't forget you
Sometimes I wish that I never met you
And yet, if I should lose you
Would mean my very life to me
Of all the queens that ever lived, I choose you
To rule me, my Rose Marie
You just don’t get voices
like this any more; husky and yet girlish and effortlessly sincere, with a falsetto that takes you out into the stratosphere without ever sounding
forced or strange. What a range! How
did he hit those notes and where have voices like this gone to?
