Regions
Fri, 05 Jun 2009 3:45 pm – Posted by Guest | 1 Comment
Arctic tern, Canterbury, photo: Tom Marshall
A few weeks ago I blogged on New Zealand’s famous bar-tailed godwits and their annual migration from our estuaries to their breeding grounds further north, however a recent unexpected encounter reminded me of a record-breaking bird that makes the godwit’s journey look like a stroll to the local dairy.
Now we’ve all had that sinking feeling when you’re late for a first date; the car won’t start, the bus doesn’t arrive, or you get three blocks down the street and think ‘did I leave the stove on?’, but whatever the reason, the Arctic Tern I saw at the Ashley River recently will be disappointing his date big time.
As their name suggests, the Arctic Tern spends much of the year close to the Arctic circle, breeding in noisy summer colonies on offshore islands around the UK and northern Europe, where they are well-known for offering a free scalping service to conservation researchers or day-trippers. However, as soon as three months after fledging these ‘sea swallows’ embark on an un-paralleled trip from their Arctic seabird cities to that other well-known block of ice down-under, Antarctica.
This annual round-trip of nearly 40,000kms is considered to be the longest known migration of any animal on earth, and it is on the Southern leg of this journey that Arctic Terns are occasionally seen in New Zealand waters.
Arctic Tern, Scotland, Photo: Tom Marshall
Spending much of the Southern summer at sea means sightings of these globe-trotting terns are rare, so you can imagine my surprise when whilst happily photographing Black-fronted Terns at the Ashley Estuary recently, an Arctic Tern walked into my viewfinder.
Even more intriguing to bird experts who confirmed my find was that the Arctic Tern was in full northern summer plumage, suggesting he should have been chatting-up other terns on a small Scottish island weeks ago.
So whatever the reasons, this particular Arctic Tern decided to hang around with the Canterbury locals, before contemplating the epic journey ahead of him. The only question is, will he be the last one standing at the bar when he finally arrives?
Published in: Canterbury, General
Leave a Comment (1)
Wed, 03 Jun 2009 9:28 am – Posted by Guest | 2 Comments
Guest blogger: Builder-cum-kea enthusiast Corey Mosen
Kea, Tom Marshall
Due to being such a terrific ‘pack horse’ on the first trip I was lucky enough to be offered another chance to help Clio again, this time at Mt Cook and this time with my expenses paid. Here we had the same objective; to catch, band, blood test and observe as many kea as possible.
Read more »
Published in: Canterbury, General, Native land animals
Leave a Comment (2)
Tue, 19 May 2009 12:33 pm – Posted by Tom | 3 Comments
Yellow eyed penguin, Andrew Walmsley
Guest blogger - Photographer, Tom Marshall
A comment my colleague and I often get as New Zealand photographers is ‘you must have had a wonderful time in Antarctica’. As much as I’d love to say ‘yes, it was awesome, but a bit chilly’, the truth is we’ve never set foot south of Dunedin and people are usually looking at our pictures of Fiordland Crested or Yellow-eyed Penguins.
Now I love ‘Happy Feet’ and ‘March of the Penguins’ with their iceberg-strewn backdrops as much as the next person, but it’s surprising how few people realize that we have some of the most amazing – and rarest penguins on the planet are right on our doorstep.
Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said recently of a new tourism drive ‘I doubt tourists will want to come to the South Island just to see a penguin’ – but why not? From recollection they were fairly thin on the ground north of the equator last time I was there, and with a million birdwatchers in the UK alone, I’m sure there’s plenty of people who’d willingly put up with the West Coast’s finest sandflies for a glimpse of a Fiordland Crested Penguin in his dapper dinner jacket.
Read more »
Published in: General, Marine and Coastal, Otago, Southland / Stewart Island, Threats and Impacts
Leave a Comment (3)
Fri, 01 May 2009 9:44 am – Posted by Guest | 2 Comments
Hauraki island branch secretary, Sue Fitchett
I am a self-described tree lover and so the proposed changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) have left me, and many others fearing for our notable and second generation trees.
Trees, as poet Ruth Fainlight wrote, are those witnesses, huge mild beings/who suffer the consequence/of sharing our planet and cannot/move away from any evil/we subject them to
The changes are effectively a costly opt-in system, whereby each and every tree will need to be scheduled, either as a grove or individually (In Auckland City the cost could be in the vicinity of $200 per scheduling) in order to receive some protection.
Banning tree protection rules, as the Government plans to do, will leave trees in 700 of Auckland’s 800 parks unprotected, and give landowners the ability to cut down any tree that is not in a reserve or listed in a district plan schedule.
Read more »
Published in: Auckland, General, Native plants and forests
Tags: arborist association, resource consent, RMA, trees
Leave a Comment (2)
Wed, 01 Apr 2009 8:52 am – Posted by Bob Walkington | 1 Comment
Guest blogger: Inaugural 2008 Pest-buster Winner, Bob Walkington.
To win the pest buster award means we have a pest problem. To lose the award I would say we are gaining ground over pests. My pest busting ‘career’ began 5 years ago, and I’ve realised to be a good trapper you need to go the extra mile. By that I mean, you need to check the trap itself adding more than just bait, using aniseed, and sometime a bit of eucalyptus to lure in pests. 1080 is a quick fix, but that doesn’t apply where I operate - Taranaki’s oldest covenant “Collier & Dickson” 360ha of lowland podocarp & hardwood forest filled with short-tailed bats, whitehead, kakariki, tomtits and fantail.
Read more »
Published in: General, Native land animals, Taranaki, Threats and Impacts
Tags: 1080, pest control, pest-buster, rats, stoats, timms traps. possumsm, trapping
Leave a Comment (1)
Wed, 25 Mar 2009 1:38 pm – Posted by Emma Gilkinson | 4 Comments
Guest blogger: Kakapo nest-minder, Emma Gilkinson
It’s 8.30 pm and I’m glued to the black and white screen. Sarah the Kakapo is the star of the show. At the moment she is a still feathery pillow with eyes like shiny black berries that open and close from time to time. I’m sitting in a tent 300m away from her nest, in the heart of the forest of Codfish Island, the epi-centre of the Kakapo Recovery Programme. An infra-red camera has been installed at Sarah’s nest to relay her movements to the palm-sized monitor I’m watching.
8.36 p.m. Sarah’s left claw emerges to scratch her left cheek.
I note that down. I’ve come to Codfish Island to be a volunteer ‘Nest Minder’ for a fortnight. Nest Minders are required to keep a vigilant eye on kakapo Mums overnight during the breeding season. The nocturnal birds leave their nests at night to feed, but if they’re gone too long their eggs or chicks risk getting too cold and may need incubation or warming up on the nest with a ‘heat pad’.
Read more »
Published in: General, Native land animals, Southland / Stewart Island
Tags: codfish island, kakapo recovery programme, volunteer
Leave a Comment (4)
Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:50 pm – Posted by Jenny Lynch | 6 Comments
Guest Blogger: Jenny Lynch, Places for Penguins Co-ordinator
Those of you who live in the Wellington area may have heard of the hit and run death of Juan Carlos in Karaka Bay. Juan Carlos was a little blue penguin befriended by a local resident, Pelayo Salinas de Leon.
RIP Juan Carlos
Pelayo would watch the little blue come from the sea, across the road and into the vegetation behind his house each night. Then one night Pelayo heard a car coming down the road followed by frenzied penguin sounds and an ominous thump. Going outside to investigate he found Juan Carlos dead, lying in the middle of the road with the offending vehicle nowhere to be seen.
Read more »
Published in: General, Wellington
Tags: little blue penguins, road kill, underpasses
Leave a Comment (6)
Tue, 10 Mar 2009 8:29 am – Posted by Bev Woods | 11 Comments
Guest Blogger: Bev Woods, Secretary for the Northern Branch
Godwits on Manawatu Estuary
As many of you will know, our bar tailed godwits are fattening up for their 11,500 kilometre trip to the Alaskan-north, and will depart anytime in the next few weeks. Packing on an estimated 50% of their body weight in fuel, the birds are currently in the throes of what is best described as a feeding frenzy.
However, their attempts to pile on fat is being thwarted by a group of kite-surfers who race through their resting and feeding area, causing them to take flight and use up valuable fuel. This situation is set against a gloomy international picture in which habitats of godwits are shrinking. The drainage of wetlands, and the discharge of toxic discharges are just some of the reasons they have fewer and fewer spots to feed and rest-up. Two years ago, around 6000 godwits came to the Whangarei Harbour habitats. This year there have been only around 3000.
Read more »
Published in: F&B National, Marine and Coastal, Threats and Impacts
Tags: godwits, habitat disturbance
Leave a Comment (11)
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 2:23 pm – Posted by Brian Lloyd | 3 Comments
Forest & Bird’s Bat Survey Officer, Top of the South, Brian Lloyd
Tasked with the job of surveying bat populations in the top of the South island, I have spent many summer days setting out bat detectors around the countryside in the hope that they pick up the high frequency echolocation (or clicks) that bats use to navigate their way around.
Short-tailed bat, Photo: Rosalind Cole
Sometimes a seemingly fruitless task , finding populations of these rare and elusive short-tailed and long-tailed bats, contributes to a national picture of the status of these two disappearing species.
Differing not only in appearance, but also with respect to feeding patterns & behaviour, our two bat species share little in common.
Short –tailed bats generally roost in large tree cavities, and in winter are known to stay in their roosts and go into torpor. Like our kakapo, they have a lek breeding system, which is the equivalent of a male sing-star contest to win over a prize mate. Most peculiarly though, is the way that they forage. Unlike most other micro-bats that catch air-borne creatures, short-tailed bats are known to forage on the ground using their folded wings as front limbs. This unusual trait makes them particularly vulnerable to predation. In the central North Island I found several thousand of these wonderful creatures in the large tracts of indigenous forest from Urewera west to Taranaki. A career highlight!
Read more »
Published in: General, Native land animals, Top of the South
Tags: extinction, long-tailed bat, short-tailed bat, volunteer
Leave a Comment (3)
Mon, 16 Feb 2009 8:59 am – Posted by Ailsa Howard | 1 Comment
Guest blogger: Chairperson for the Kaikoura Branch, Ailsa Howard
While DOC has been busy crafting dummy sea-lions in an attempt to attract males ashore, the Kaikoura community along with the local DOC staff have been involved in a charade of our own: playing the call of the endangered Hutton’s shearwater through loud speakers, in bid to get them to return to their new breeding site.
Read more »
Published in: General, Native land animals, Top of the South
Tags: fundraising, migration, predator proof fence, recovery programme, shearwater, volunteer
Leave a Comment (1)
Next Entries »
