Swimming with the shags

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 59

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

We now have a rough copy of our new short film on our resident pied shags, though its too long (sigh) so  we’re cutting it in half; then with our preferred commentator coming down with a very unseasonable  lurgy, we have been  reduced to a crawl. Not that we are complaining for we are in the middle of an endless summer, and gave ourselves a break yesterday to take in MR TURNER at Petone’s Lighthouse;  two and a half hours of Mike Leigh’s deliriously, needling perfection.

So if you are fed up with hedging about in the snow in the US and elsewhere, we are thinking of you, while lounging around nevertheless in our equally delirious sea, which is  mostly deserted, even at this time of the year.

This is one of the reason why it's so rich in birdlife and the stately  and rare Pied Shag- Kāruhiruhi, in particular. 

Pied Shag at Raumati Beach January 2015 

The frustrations of filming wild animals are many, and much multiplied when they happen to be diving waterbirds. These were  illustrated yesterday as, waist deep in the Tasman Sea,  a pied shag suddenly surfaced not 20 feet away. Despite  the  reference to The Godfather in our headline however, there is nothing  so entrancing as getting this close to wildlife even when they are quite oblivious to your pain at not being camera ready. Nevertheless we made the best of it and took extensive notes, then managed to get a  shot away from up in the car park, shortly before she took off.

NZ Sand flounder
-courtesy Forest and Bird 

She stayed under water for around 20 seconds at a time which seems about average for these birds (the little diving scaup goes down for about 12 seconds; while dabchicks can hold their breath a little longer and disappear for 15-18s before coming up to breathe). The third time she went down however, she came up with a small grey flounder-paatiki in her beak. 

It was around three inches across and seemed way too large for her to swallow, but she just shook it back and forward though it hadn't appeared to be moving, then lifted her beak and down it went. Now she did have trouble, as the fish began to stall.  You could see it going down, helped along by a vigorous shaking of the neck and constant gulping; then at the last minute she lifted herself up on the surface of the water and flapped out her wings. We thought that might be a meal enough for the day – but no, back she went for more. So perhaps she is still has youngsters that she’s feeding back at the Waikanae estuary.

The delay  meant we had time to get back out and fire off a couple of shots. 

Pied Shag Raumati Beach

What was  curious to see, was  a bird  this size feeding so close in to the breakers where the water was only ankle deep. It also signalled how fecund these waters have become since a Marine Reserve was declared between this coast and Kapiti Island. It has been around four years since this Pied Shag colony began roosting on a large macrocarpa here at Raumati Beach and this year we have had more than ever; up to 18 birds bunched up on the tree at a time. It marks the sweetest reversal of New Zealand’s appalling history of trying to exterminate these birds.

Pied Shag in breakers - Raumati Beach

Meanwhile here is something completely different, our native flower of the week – now in full blossom. It is a hibiscus with seed pods to the left. It was brought to these shores by Maori around 800 years ago, though no-one knows from quite where. The consensus seems to be the Cook Islands.  

Native hibiscus 

Track we were listening to while posting this Eddie Cochrane -Aint no cure for the summertime blues. Oh yes there is!

 I'm gonna take two weeks, gonna have a fine vacation

I'm gonna take my problem to the United Nations

Well I called my congressman and he said quote:

"I'd like to help you son but you're too young to vote"

Sometimes I wonder what I'm a gonna do

But there ain't no cure for the summertime blues

Jill Studd's Blog

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Paradise Regained

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 58

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

We have been promising a story on our local shag community (cormorants for northern hemisphere visitors), which is surprisingly various; but it’s the height of the fledging season and we have been making -but then deciding to remake- our film as new footage upstages the old. Along with our understanding of what’s going on.

Black Shag- Waikanae River estuary Jan 15  

So we have posted  a couple of images to whet the appetite, both taken at the shag nursery at the Waikanae estuary, today.

Pied Shags on nests Waikanae River estuary Jan 15 

Meanwhile, and remarkably, for such a public area that is very popular with summer visitors to the beach (and their dogs), we still have eight putangitangi-paradise ducklings down at the local beach public pond. And they are thriving. Here are some time-lapse comparisons to show their  darkening colour as they  head toward  adolescence. The parents are noticeably less fretful now the youngsters are  more able to look after themselves. They  spend a lot of time grazing the grass verges which is a major source of sustenance for them.

December 29

January 3

January 6

Jan 15

These ducklings will remain this molted black colour for the next three or four weeks, before the females and males become apparent when the assume their mature plumage.

What does  remain surprising is that despite this public pool having been refilled in early December, and the ready feed provided by human visitors  the  common ducks that used to frequent it  have still not returned.   

Track we were listening too while posting this Connie Francis from 1958 Stupid Cupid - of which she says -Stupid Cupid, what a smash, it was even a hit title!  There was no way it could miss even if the song was bad.  There are such things as hit titles and this was one. 

You got me jumping like a crazy clown 

And I don't feature what your putting down 

Since I kissed his loving lips of wine 

The thing that bothers me is that I like it fine 

Hey hey set me free 

Stupid Cupid stop picking on me 

Jill Studd's Blog

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A Korimako - Bellbird for the New Year

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 57

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

School is out down here in the South Pacific, and will remain so for a month or more as the weather makes up its mind to remain hot and dusky; and there’s a stampede to the beach. And Midnight Collective are also down there, putting together a post with a film on the pied shag colony that’s taken up residence at Raumati Beach. In the meantime here is a photo of a bellbird kindly sent to us by a supporter – Bill Studd.





Bellbird in foxglove -Akatarewa, Tararuas - photo Bill Studd 

This was taken up in the Tararuas, at the back of the town of Waikanae,  at around 1000ft asl. The climate up there is very much sharper than down on the coast with a higher rainfall and two or three snowfalls a year though these birds seem to be doing well enough, especially as Bill keeps a pest trapping programme going on his forestry-farm block, where the photo was taken. Like the kereru (native pigeon), these birds keep near the extant bush and don’t seem to venture on the town side of the railway that runs along the bottom of this range.  This one is getting a little drunk on the wild foxgloves that have established in cleared areas around the bush and along the waterways..   

They are mostly known for their singing, famously described by Cook's naturalist Joseph Banks as deafening (in Queen Charlotte Sound Marlborough) -1770. For shame! We watched one in puzzlement once, in a plum tree, in the upper reaches of Waikanae,  pushing its beak into every plum  as she tested them for ripeness. It took us a while to finally decide that she wasn't  a waxeye (too big and no white ring around the eye) but a fledgling bellbird that hadn’t yet grown its full stand of tail feathers. 

Track we were listening too while posting this - the peerless Billie Holiday on Gershwin's - Summertime (and the livin' is easy) If only! 

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Christmas in Paradise

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 56

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

 

Female putangitangi-paradise duck atop 8 youngsters 

Just when you think nature is done and dusted, she pulls a new surprise and here they are - a family of putangitangi – paradise ducks - that have just come out on our local public pond. There’s quite a back story here but first to our Christmas video.

This pond has been emptied for renovation over most of this year. The mallards that usually loiter here, hung around  for a while (for feeding) but had deserted it by spring. They still haven’t returned. A pair of paradise ducks have raised ducklings here over the last three years, though in ever decreasing numbers; four, three, then a solitary one last year.

Two weeks ago the pond was refilled, and then to everyone’s delighted surprise, as if on a christmas cue, three days ago this brood of eight ducklings came out on it. They are attracting a lot of attention, but raise many questions, the first being - are these the same pair that usually nest here?

They aren’t banded so we only have circumstantial evidence to link this pair with previous years. However going by the worn quality of their feathering, they definitely are an ‘older’ couple, while the male has developed a pronounced limp. Another pointer is that the parents are used to being fed by the public and so are more domesticated than their wild cousins who you can’t usually get close to. This feeding isn’t as automatic a response as you might think, but learned. When passersby first attempted to feed the ducklings they had no idea that food was being thrown at them until their parents began picking it up and sharing it round.

She keeps a close eye on proceedings

But then how did Mum get her timing so right, because the pond was dry when she began sitting on her nest? Presuming this is the same pair, they are about six weeks later in the year in bringing out a brood which are usually about to leave this pond by Christmas. So she must have delayed her sitting – though how remains a conundrum. (We didn’t know they were filling the pond until it happened!)

Another intriguing character of putangitangi behaviour lies in their sibling relationships. These ducklings will soon change colour, with their feathers growing into the same shade as their father. They all look the same until three or four weeks later, when over about four or five hours, the daughters assume their female colouring. Three years ago, when we were just getting to know these animals, we began to take umbrage when a runt of the litter seemed to be picked on by older siblings. On further observation it became clear that the opposite was happening – that the runt was being overly protected. This runt turned out to be the sole sister in the family. She was particularly attached to her father and would often go and sit by him. (He usually keeps a watchful distance)

What is also noticeable around a public pond like this is that the ducklings can get overheated. They will try and shelter under their mother, but then dive back into the pool to cool down.

These native birds aren’t ducks at all of course, but a shelduck, closer to a goose,  and one of the reasons they are doing reasonably well, is that they are such impressive parents – especially the mothers. It was always good to see them at the dune lake because they acted as an early warning alarm for all the other birds, some of whom weren’t near as canny. And just as a final point though these birds are very tolerant of public attention they are especially aroused by dogs which are frequent visitors here, and adolescent males. It is intriguing to watch girls approach the brood to photograph them when they hardly move, but any male of tweenage or older, sends them straight into the safety of the pond.

Pohutukawa - a NZ Christmas tree

A very Meri Kirihimete  (Merry Christmas) to all our many visitors from over this year and all the best for 2015… And to those who are also trying to hold their ecological fort against vandalising forces … Salutations! You are not alone!

Track we were listening to while posting this the peerless 

Eartha Kitt Santa Baby...

Come and trim my Christmas tree 

with some decorations 

bought at Tiffany's;

I really do believe in you;

Let's see if you believe in me...

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Kotuku - The fallout

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 55

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Finally we have a response from the NZTA to our list of questions regarding the management of kotuku, the red pollution in the Wharemauku, pollution monitoring in the Ratanui Rd wetland and the issue of pollution monitor delapidation.

NZTA (from the Environment Manager)

Thank you for the photograph – it reminds me of the plastic heron in my fish pond back home. I have checked out the NIWA monitors at the location post storm this week and there is some vegetation fouling which needs removed and this will be attended to. I don’t have much more to say on this topic other than the project has consent to construct the expressway and is doing its best to comply with all consent conditions at all times, and there is a real commitment by the construction team to do so. If you wish to meet with the ecologist and myself at any time in the future to discuss the weed removal and landscaping plan for the areas of land you are concerned about please let me know.

In other words - they're continuing not to say (much more) though  just so you aren’t confused, here are two spot-the-difference photographs - the kotuku is on the left.

 
 There are only  100 left of the former still living on this planet; but no shortage of the latter. They start at around $800 (sans postage).

Meanwhile we remain none the wiser as to whether the NZTA has a plan to manage  encounters with this critically endangered bird.

Despite the assurance in this email, the monitor hadn’t been checked, because we found two staff doing just that, the next morning. They had a cursory look and were goodnaturedly heckled by strollers on the walkway for being unwilling to get their feet wet by crossing the creek for a closer inspection. A week later  the monitor still hasn’t been cleared of debris. Though as we have previously mentioned it isn’t sited far enough down the Wharemauku anyway, to pick up the red pollution that is pouring into its lower reaches.

NIWA pollution monitor Dec 10

This is the monitor submerged at the height of Wednesday’s flood, which was one of the most dramatic of the past ten years. And here it is again a week later.

NIWA pollution monitor Dec 16

Snarled detached pipe Dec 16

Just downstream from here the local juvenile delinquents had detached a section of the Fortress fence, designed to keep the Public off the expressway site,  and laid it across the Wharemauku. It enabled us to get across and have a closer inspection.

The detached arm going into the body of the monitor, which we have been publicising for six weeks now, will have allowed the water inside.  Curiously a makeshift  pallet bridge has been thrown across the creek though we don’t know by whom, or whether they had  permit to do so.

Fortress Bridge over Wharemauku

In lieu of their assistance we have decided to bestow upon these delinquents the Midnight Collective Fortress Award which includes free membership to the Midnight Collective. (Well ok, membership is free anyway.)

Raumati Beach Dune Lake Dec 16

The storm has given us our dune lake back, though, ominously  all the  wetland birds have now abandoned this area and there is no sign of the heron and spoonbills of previous years. 

Yet the air  is filled with new generations of welcome swallows as our nests at either end of the Wharemauku have fostered second broods. Here a mother and fledgling are resting on a section of the expressway security fence that our new juvenile delinquent members missed. 

Welcome Swallow and fledgling NZTA security fence Dec 16 

The mothers continually tease the youngsters into the air by looping down to feed them and then not going through with it. This trips them into the air where they start to get the idea themselves. A light seems to go on and then they’re away on their own. There is still plenty of insect life around for these birds despite the premature drying up of the lake.

Track we were listening to   John Mayall  Let's Work Together This is from A Sense of Place 1990. He mines a narrow range of Blues but its all pure gold.

People, when things go wrong

As they sometimes will

And the road you travel

It stays all uphill

Let's work together

Come on, come on

Let's work together

Jill Studd's Blog

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Kotuku & the Goebbelisation of the Media

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 54

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Kotuku at Ratanui Rd wetland - adjoining expressway excavations

This is a photograph of one of New Zealand’s iconic birds, the very rare and endangered kotuku. It is thought to have established here from Australia a few hundred years ago, and was nearly hunted to extinction by both Pakeha and Maori when their breeding ground was discovered in Okarito Lagoon, South Westland (south-west coast of the South Island). Their plumage, like the extinct huia’s had become a fashion accessory.  They have recovered to around a hundred birds and a stray is sometimes encountered along this Kapiti coast. It is the breeding season so this one may be an immature juvenile. There is only one colony of these birds in New Zealand and it remains a mystery as to why they haven’t established further colonies in the manner of the Royal Spoonbill. 

Kotuku beside Expressway excavations Dec 5 2014

It is the location of this bird however, that has set alarm bells ringing, for this impressively large animal was found resting after feeding at the Ratanui Rd wetland about 30 metres from where excavation work was being carried out on the expressway.

So what are our concerns?

Juvenile dabchick - Ratanui Rd wetland 2013

They centre on two areas: the first on conservation issues,  the second on the way the NZTA has set out to propagandise itself. We recently contacted the organisation (like the Hydra it now consists of about four different entities – perhaps more) – to ask how it manages encounters like this and whether adequate pollution controls exist to prevent run off into this wetland, which is one of our most important outside the Waikanae estuary. There were two broods of NZ scaup raised here last year and a juvenile dabchick was also seen feeding here. 

We couldn’t find pollution monitors and are waiting to be reassured. And we are still waiting for our concerns over the NZTA monitor and the pollutant in the Wharemauku to be addressed in writing, though they seem happy enough to talk on the phone and in private meetings; which raises the second issue and that is the slick management of our media by the NZTA.

In a recent post on snowjobbing, we discussed the Government’s plans to muzzle the scientific community by feeding its commentary’s through media managers, the leverage for which comes through the government funding that most of these scientists rely on. This system is in place in the management of the expressway by the NZTA. The environment manager’s emails for example appear to be vetted by their media managers, while incoming emails also appear to be routed through a media central CONTROL, before being passed on. We also have a steady stream of partisan stories appearing in the local press.  Three puff pieces appearing in the week before the election however, has effectively compromised the NZTA’s professional independence along with that of its environmental managers.

The NZTA media strategy is laid out in a manager’s job description

Role & Key Responsibilities:

• Develop communications and community engagement strategy, channels & budget. • Develop tender docs and negotiate for best communications services & solutions including film, graphic design, conceptual design & advertising. • Establish regular communications channels for locals, national road users and media. Including radio, press, web, social media, digital newsletter and others.  • Create local event events series and seed positive engagement projects with local schools, iwi, artists, community groups etc. • Manage external project brand in line with NZTA Alliance guidelines. • Develop internal brand to support Alliance culture of high performance. Launch brand, assets and channels across an organisation that has grown from 60 to 300 people in just over six months.  • Manage all channels (internal & external) and a team of contractors.  • Seed positive media stories and support NZTA media manager with media issues.

Here lies revealed the Goebbelisation of the media.     

So what does this mean for a local conservation community intent on trying to protect and enhance the lives and habitat of the native species that still remain here? Simply that it is impossible to work openly and share information freely with such organisations without being sucked into their propaganda apparatus. In effect you’ll be damned if you collaborate; then damned again when you don’t –better by far to treasure your integrity.

Track we were listening to while posting this – John Rowles heartsickness for home Cheryl Moana Marie which more than matches our own for what’s going on down here at the moment. 

In the sleepy little town

Where soft breezes blow

There's a lovely little Maori miss

I used to know

Someday I will find my way

And I'll return from over the sea

To where my island sweetheart

Waits for me

Jill Studd's Blog

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The Garden and the Dune Lake - The Midnight Collective Essay

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 53

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Frances Jill Studd's  artist garden 

This is the artist, Frances Jill Studd’s flower garden, pictured at the end of Spring. It has affinities to an English cottage garden (Jill was born and spent her childhood in England), but significant differences and these are worth ferreting out. And while this may seem to have little to do with the life of a dune lake swamp, a little reflection will reveal the connection, for it involves how we see ourselves in relation to the world in which we live.

 

The original garden was established on a sand dune and it dates back to the late 1970’s. A retired farming couple from North Canterbury formed and then tended it for thirty years. They placed this area (pictured) as a female centre to the garden, but Jill  transformed this from its original formal ambitions as a garden to be gazed at from afar. The vegetable garden next to it, is its opposite –burly and voluble, it is typically male and utilitarian, a garden ordered into rows - then worked in to harvest crops  from. The small size of this veggie plot means that this is primarily for pleasure and not profit –though it retains the sly allusion, that it could be paying its way.  

 

The female centre to this garden originally featured shrubs fashionable in their  time, miniature conifers, azaleas and native hebe. There are also three mature camelia on the property, one sited at the back left of the photo. The salt breeze burns their leaves; but nevertheless they flourish in this sand dune country bringing a soft glow of pink and red into winter as they flower through June to August. They also provide nesting sites for blackbird families in spring and summer which indicates how a garden will integrate itself into a wider ecology despite its owners separatist intentions. The shrubs are purchased at a local nursery and while they indicate the gardeners personal taste and pleasure, they don’t have any deeper connection with them.

 

Another survivor from that original garden is the broom to the left of it. This lights the garden yellow in early spring but like citrus, it is vulnerable to local stem borer which will finally kill it off. This insect is a native and Jill won’t use sprays, so adopts a policy of strategic pruning and then replacement as the infestation kills the plant.

 

The native plants that she fosters also indicate how the world has changed in 50 years when natives were viewed as colourless inferiors  to exotics. These include, 6 kowhai trees (to attract tui, and other honey easters), ringaringa, 2 cabbage trees, 4 manuka, a native fuchsia, hoheria (lacebark), and a native hibiscus.

These hibiscus aren’t originally native, but were brought to New Zealand from the South Pacific islands by Maori around the 13^th Century. I well remember being chastised by a botanist friend, when I suggested that perhaps the seed arrived accidentally with the soil around the kumara (sweet potato). -Why would you assume that? was his phlegmatic response. In fact Maori were as keen on their gardens as the rest of humanity and this explains why pohutukawa (the NZ Christmas tree) were flourishing in Te Arawa country on the shores of Lake Rotorua in the central North Island when Cook first arrived in 1769.

 

Jill progressively remade this central garden in an English cottage style, but it has none of the formal structure of such gardens. Here different plant species were planted in beds beside each other -the stocks separate from the marigolds which were separated  from the roses which usually had beds of their own (indicating status), all of which was part and parcel of the way a post-war NZ ordered its suburban garden décor (and its suburban lives). To a large degree it still is. Her annuals coexist however, in the manner of a pasture of wild flowers. She brings an artist’s mettle to this planting, so nothing is either simple or unsurprising or sequenced, and yet  everything is  meticulously placed to grow into itself. As such it is a design that evolves from year to year.

Tararua Foxglove

And these plants include those with a significant personal history. Her mother’s daffodils –her mother-in-law’s wintersweet - an elderly friend’s yellow daisy -her school chum’s Canterbury Bells -the lavender from her first flat in Devonport Auckland.  And much else has been ‘requisitioned’ from public gardens and elsewhere (Garden theft is an honest art practiced by all). This includes a rose from the Cook’s Beach memorial (where Capt Cook observed the Transit of Mercury in Feb 1770), and wild foxglove seed harvested from the Tararua Park.

Cook's rose, Cooks Beach - Coromandel

There are heritage plants here too, the seeds tracked down on the internet - granny bonnet, and anchusa - honeywart to bring the bees, then a big, rangy, uncontrollable buddleia for butterflies; along with tobacco plant first seeded from an artist’s  residency in Ranfurly, up on the Maniototo plateau, in central Otago.

So this is a garden not to be viewed from a distance but to be lived in, puzzled over, fostered and moved through. It is constantly evolving and it is a moveable feast - a living garden, that she carries with her when she moves her residential address. It also reappears massaged into her artwork...

Frances Jill Studd -Mantle 6 - u8Digital photograph 2013

Such a garden provides an example of the kind of sophisticated  sensibility we need to bring to our understanding and rehabilitation of rare and delicate ecosystems. The Raumati Beach dune lake sits in the middle of town and has attracted a rich variety of birdlife to its fecund waters. It is now doomed, as the juggernaut of the expressway creeps ever closer but it’s complex, integrated and vulnerable life cycle appears already to have been irreversibly damaged by it.

Emptied - Raumati Beach dune lake -Nov 2014

Yet even where rehabilitation of our wetlands is being promoted they are compromised by walking and cycle tracks built for human pleasure and recreation and not the ecosystems wellbeing. This is not the way to introduce a human presence back into these vulnerable areas, but an extension of the history of human domination and disfigurement.  This has involved the gradual  reduction or local extinction of all our native species. The wetland forest and the delicate native orchids and gentians were the first to go. They have been followed now by even the hardiest of survivalists, like the raupo. The same goes for our threatened bird life.

 

With the premature drying up of this wetland this year we have seen that human predatory influence in action. We have seen none of the rich variety of birdlife that we usually see down here. We are unlikely to see it again. 

 

Track we were listening to while posting this San Francisco (Wear some flowers in your hair)  Ok- (chosen by the guest artist!) 

For those who come to San Francisco

Summertime will be a love-in there

In the streets of San Francisco

Gentle people with flowers in their hair

Scott McKenzie of course - but oh! how San Francisco has changed since then. 

Jill Studd's blog

vantoohey@gmail.com