Miranda -The 'Flock'

A wild weather day to be visiting Miranda Shorebird centre but good to catch up with people and see the growing 'Flock'

After the AGM an excellent talk by Pip Wallace entitled The nature of protection -Biodiversity law and planning.


More to follow.

Birthday Treat

One of my favourite places to explore is the Waitakere coastline of Whatipu beach and today we were exploring the Parahara dunes near Karekare beach.

The forecast was gale force winds of 100 kms per hour and 9 metre waves for later in the day. We were not disappointed but between the downpours there was time for botanising with a hardy group of 7. Thoroughly enjoyed the day.

 

More Photos to follow.....................

Pigeon Post - Wrong Lens?

I came to birds late and now they (a Kereru)  are coming to me.  Thanks for the photos Lee.

 

The Three Beaches

A great day spent visiting the three East coast beaches and checking traps, enjoying birds, friendships' an Indian Summer and Indian taka-ways..

 

 

 

 

Photos and more to follow.

Dotterel Forum-Omaha beach.

An extremely interesting and informative talk by John Dowding today at the dotterel forum which was held at Omaha.
John outlined the good news and bad news with the progress of the North Island and South Island dotterel populations.

John Stewart also gave a very short talk about the catching and banding of the dotterels that have nested on Hobbs Beach for the very first time.

Photos and more to follow.

The Kermadecs

I'm just back from my expedition to the Kermadec Islands . A fantastic experience with plenty of great memories.

 The kermadec Islands are very remote. Almost 1000kms northeast of New Zealand.  Managed and maintained by the Department of Conservation (DoC) New Zealand.

The immediate area around the islands is  marine reserve and now there is a move to create the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary covering some 620,000 square kilometres of ocean to protect this region from fishing and mining.

Zodiac cruising around Curtis Island

Black winged petrel



That's Mt Moumoukai towering above the crater lakes

 

White-naped petrel

Kermadec petrel

Kermadec Pohutakawa

Low Flat

 

Nikau grove

Dragonfly licking stalk

 

 

Spotless Crake

Kermadec Kakariki



Kermadec Kakariki




Mt Moumoukai 516 metres

This is the view from Mt Moumoukai which is 516 metres high and overlooks the blue and the green lakes. It was quite a climb in the sub-tropical heat after we had also walked to Boat Cove for a picnic lunch.


Pleased to be at Denham Bay beach Raoul island. Thanks for this shot Andrea.

 You can see by the grin on my face that I was so pleased to complete the overland traverse trek to the historic Denham Bay on Raoul Island via the ridge above the crater and then down the steep track with the help of four roped sections.

 The walk along the ridge of the caldera had great views into the crater of the green and blue lakes. Then this  view down to Denham Bay. The lighter green area is the swamp. This was  called the lagoon by early settlers.

 
The sea can be unforgiving on this beach with a serious swell and  undertow and under different weather conditions early settlers were forced to move to the other side of the island. Although the bay looked benign on our visit.

 



View down to Denham bay.

 

 

Spirit of Enderby

Our expedition ship The 'Spirit of Enderby' a 72 metre ex Russian oceanographic ship complete with Russian crew  leased from the Russian Government.

Bottlenose dolphins bow riding.

Red-tailed tropic bird

False Killer Whale

False killer Whale

Photos and plenty more to follow.................

Awhitu with Bot Soc.

Bot Soc visit to the Awhitu peninsular with Tricia leading the way.

 

 

Flighty Island Birds.

It was an early start to head North then a long drive to the West coast to kayak to the island allowing time to walk up the beach in time for a High Tide bird count.

SIPOS head South

 

 On the way up that beach a huge number of South Island pied oystercatchers headed South to the Islands mid-point HT roost. By the time we arrived at our destination with time to spare many birds had left.

Upper wings and lower wings of SIPOS

Pied Stilt on the move

Copper to be identified.

 

Tricky trap locations hidden in dunes

Three of seven Whimbrel that flew by heading North

 Then the count was started only to be interrupted as some birds flew back. Why they were so flightly we do not know.

Today we also counted pied stilt, Caspian tern, NZ dotterel, banded dotterel and seven whimbrel flew North too.