I have often been intrigued by this little taraire tree grove high above Te Muri beach. I visit this often area often its one of my favourite walks .. There are seven taraire trees, one rewarewa and a nikau palm.
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| Taraire tree grove |
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| Seven Taraire trees, one Rewarewa and one Nikau |
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| Spring is on its way! |
It's cool but the morning views across to the Whangarei Heads are always stunning. Its interesting to visit this Wildlife reserve
More to follow.
A stunning blue- sky day to visit the wide vistas surrounding the Pukorokoro Shorebird Centre.
Photos to follow...........
I added our local sightings of spoonbill to the nationwide survey. Many thanks to Cecily and others who tipped me off about sightings locally around Shoal and Ngataringa estuaries. The survey is being conducted this month (July) to assess the present population size of the Royal Spoonbill species. The last survey was completed in 2012 and a little under 3000 birds were counted.
More to follow........
KEEPING THE SHELL BANKS SAFE FOR BIRDS.
What a fantastic job they did of picking up tiny fragments of plastic and fishing line that can be a real problem to the birds that live and visit the estuary and those that attempt to nest here.
I was so pleased to be able to share some information about the birds and we did see a South Island pied oystercatcher through my telescope.
Thank you to all the teaching staff who organised this including RTH and Theo, the Auckland Council Ranger who came along to hand out gloves and help with the clean-up. Most appreciated.
Yesterday the Auckland Botanical Society visited Smiths Bush on the North Shore to check the current botanical species list of his small remnant forest of mainly Kahikatea trees. Ben led the way and Steve added some historic insights into how the bush had been damaged and also cared for over the years.
More photos to follow....
Reassuring to see so many people turned out today to march down Queens Street against the contentious Fast Track Development legislation by the present Government.
Many thousands of people carrying excellent banners voiced their outrage at the anti-democratic approach this government has with its intention to Fast track seabed and other mining projects without any regard to the present environmental legislation that is there to safeguard the environment.
It was great to be invited to the Department of Conservation Tara iti Hui at Mangawhai village today.
Although an early start to drive North to attend I was rewarded with a beautiful sunrise as I arrived at the village library for the meeting.
A most enjoyable day meeting up with friends some of which I have not seen for a while who are all involved in caring for a variety of habitats and species including our rarest endemic New Zealand bird the Fairy Tern Tara iti.
I also enjoyed the online contribution by Dr. Claire Greenwell from Perth in Western Australia. I have met Claire and enjoyed visiting Australian Fairy Tern sites during many of my visits to Western Australia. Claire is a Marine Scientist and is the Convenor of the Western Australian Fairy Tern Network.
Cape Barren Geese at Ruakaka estuary. These geese are endemic to southern Australia.
Excellent presentations at the Dotterel Forum event at the Arts Centre in Orewa this morning.
Always good to catch up with such an interesting group of people helping protect dotterels and their breeding success.
More to follow........
The trees of Waikato particularly around Cambridge area are quite stunning including in Cambridge itself. Hall street has some beautiful Plane trees. It's said to be the most attractive street in Cambridge, so I had to take a look. A credit to Cambridge that they are happy to live alongside decent sized trees unlike Auckland city that continues to cut them down at an alarming rate.
Around the hidden Te Ko Utu Reserve also near the centre of town there are more fine trees which at this time of the year, Autumn, are just beginning to turn beautiful golden shades.
We chanced the rain forecast to visit the Waitakaruru Sculpture gardens just a little way out of Cambridge town and they were well worth the visit.
A Conker tree above the lake brought back many memories of childhood conker fights at school. These were very often banned as the season progressed as they could be quite aggressive. Conkers are the seeds of the Horse chestnut trees.
Te Awamutu has more fine trees including this one in the Selwyn Reserve in the centre of the town. It's a huge sweet chestnut tree which is not the Horse variety. These produce the chestnuts that can be roasted.
Raglan in the sunshine and the rain with views to Mount Pirongia which I climbed some years back from both sides. Today a market was full on at the Old Raglan School that is now an art studio.
More photos to follow....................
Landscape Infrastructure
'Urban design based on principles of Landscape Infrastructure is focused on landscape-based integration of the built and natural environments—seeking out innovative opportunities for building nature and public amenities into the infrastructure of a city'.
With BOT SOC today exploring the Landscape infrastructure of the wetlands at the 'Landings' development at Auckland airport.
Whangateau estuary
I have always been intrigued since being educated by John Walsby about how stingray feed on cockle shells in our estuaries. Staying at the excellent Whangateau campsite for a couple of nights recently I was reminded of a memorable visit to the Whangateau village hall at the edge of the Whangateau harbour in January 2011 that I first met John who was part of an environment open day event.
In the morning there were snorkeling activities for children. Then talks about the many marine creatures on display in tanks on trestle tables in the hall. Roger Grace the expert underwater photographer was also present. Sadly, Roger has since passed away.
After the excellent talks John offered to take a group to explore the now waterless estuary. What I haven't mentioned is that the weather was atrocious on that day and although there was a good number of visitors at this event only 7 of us were game enough to join John on what was to be for me a not to be missed opportunity to learn from an excellent educator.
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| Whangateau estuary with John Walsby January 2011 |
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| Whangateau estuary with John Walsby January 2011 |
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| Whangateau estuary February 2024 |
With a little imagination you can see the shape of a stingray as it flutters its wings to clear the sand so exposing in a little pit the buried cockle shells which it would then devour leaving only small fragments of shell.
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| Stingray cockle feeding pit. |
Fortunately, the weather on our present stay is very different and we have had yet another week of sunshine and heat.
Tawharanui open sanctuary
The sands at Tawharanui were too hot to walk on barefoot but I did enjoy exploring one of the wetlands on the Tawharanui peninsular behind the predator proof fence of this open sanctuary.
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| Tawharanui white sand beach |
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| Tawharanui predator proof fence |
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| Tawharanui wetlands |
Heading North and some wonderful lighting and seascapes to enjoy.
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| Ruakaka |
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| Motutara Reserve |
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| Whananaki Estuary |
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| Copper butterfly |
Late post-as we have been enjoying this year's sunshine having missed out in January last year with Cyclones bringing heavy rain and flooding. Temperatures are 25C creeping up to 28C today.
Camping in the van at Mahurangi West was very enjoyable. A Bar-tailed godwit flock of 42 birds landed
in Sullivans Bay on the 12th of January at High tide to roost. Nearby was a regular flock of 29 oystercatchers all but three were Variable oystercatchers. The three were South Island pied oystercatchers.
Just one NZ dotterel was observed.
Today the pohutukawa trees were in full flower and were just stunning in the coastal Mahurangi Regional Reserve.
I enjoyed one of my favourite walks to enjoy these stunning views of the Mahurangi estuary.
More to follow....................
A beautiful morning to drop into the Pukorokoro, Robert Findlay wildlife reserve to check out the over 6000 bar-tailed godwit (kuaka) that are resident there at the present time. We have just over 200 as our share of this migratory species in our local estuaries at Shoal and Ngataringa so it's a great opportunity to see this much larger flock at the Pukorokoro reserve.
I have chosen well; the tide is good for approximately a 10.30 am high tide and the reserve is very quiet. Its just a week proceeding Christmas day so very few people are around which is just how I like to experience this wonderful habitat. But first I called into to the nearby Shorebird Centre to check with Keith on the latest news and birds likely to be seen.
Back at the hides it was good to catch up with Hera one of the Kaitiaki Rangers who had set up her scope at the stilt pond hide where most of the 6000 bar-tailed godwit were quietly roosting (resting).
Also, a scattering of some of the birds we see at Shoal estuary -South Island pied oystercatcher and Caspian tern. I was pleased to also see just a small group of wrybill remaining. This wonderful shorebird, one of my favourites with its bent to the right bill. Our local wrybill have left our estuary to migrate to the South Island to breed before returning next year to avoid the South Island winter.
An excellent workshop talk today by Ian Davies and Tom Auer from the Cornell University. A range of information to showcase how eBird data informs our understanding of species distribution, status and population trends.
I have been adding my local data to the eBird site for some years now to share with the birding community. This also safeguards data for the future. One of the interesting aspects raised in the talk was to include audio recordings when uploading to eBird as these can be used to build identification of species in an associated App called Merlin which is useful for bird identification.
A big thankyou to Ian Mclean (BirdsNZ Auckland Regional Representative) for organizing this event and also to the Auckland Council staff for hosting at the Ambury Regional Park Centre.
Yesterday morning with perfect sunny weather, we held the 5th Welcome to the Godwit event at Sandy Bay Road Reserve. This is an annual event hosted by the RTH team.
With over a hundred local residents including many children it was a fun active event. It also gave me a chance to share through the scope some sightings and information about our flock of over two hundred bar-tailed godwits including juveniles that have recently arrived from Alaska. They will stay with us until March. Then many will return via China to Alaska to breed.
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| 205 Bar-tailed Godwit - 4th November 2023 |
Today was the Auckland Marathon an annual event with this year 14,000 people taking part. They run from the start in Devonport on a circuitous route with the finish line in Auckland. Yesterday I ventured out at dawn to catch up with the number of Bar-Tailed Godwit that have now arrived in our local estuary.
When I left in mid-September for Australia only five had arrived but yesterday well over 200 hundred where roosting on a local shell bank at high tide. These included a high percentage of juvenile birds that will have followed the adult birds from Northen Alaska finding their own way to the estuary. Now that is a little more than a Marathon, I think.
Photos to follow.
It's great to be back in Western Australia enjoying the amazing biodiversity that this region has to offer.
First stop always has to be Wireless hill in Perth a great place to get your eyes into searching for native orchids. It's also a good area to see birds feeding on the kangaroo paw plant.
Then our planned trip further South to Yallingup. On route we tried to locate the Ambergate Reserve at Busselton, but the GPS led us to a highway that seemed to bisect the road we needed. we decided it was better to press on and find this recommended reserve on the way back.
Yallingup is in the Cape Naturaliste National Park. The house we are staying in is surrounded by bush and an ideal area for native orchids including Cowslip Orchid, Spider and purple enamel orchid. Nearby I found two species of round leaved sundew in flower. One with white flowers the other blue flowers.
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| Purple Enamel Orchid |
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| Cowslip Orchid |
A whale watch boat trip from Dunsborough was excellent with good close sightings of 10 metre humpback whales. The boat keeping to a 100 metre distance to respect the whale's space.
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| Tail slap of a humpback whale |
The next day we were exploring a favorite spot, Castle Rock. We found more orchids along the walk to Meelup beach. This included the tiny little pink fairy orchid. From the shore we could also see humpback whales too. No sign of Fairy Wrens on this visit but certainly many honeyeaters busy through the bush.
On previous visits we have also visited the Cape Naturaliste lighthouse and the walk to the whale watch lookout platform. It's a great walk through interesting sandy bush paths the habitat of snakes some venomous and lizards. We did see honey eaters and a pair of Bronzewing doves.
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| Cape Naturaliste lighthouse habitat |
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| Bronzewing Dove |
The day was heating up to the mid 30 degrees so decided to head for shade with a return visit to Meelup beach to allow us further views of the whales that we had seen from the beach yesterday but not today. However, it's a great place to spend some time.
Then North to search again for the Ambergate reserve near Busselton. This time we were successful and enjoyed seeing Rattlebeak orchids and a species of larger leafed sundew. The temperature today reached 34degrees so hot work searching. Next stop Rockingham for the night.
Refreshed in the morning we continued North to Yanchep staying at an Airbnb close to the Yanchep National Park. We spent a couple of days exploring this beautiful location. Within the plant gardens good sightings of two splendid fairy wrens. This is an amazing little bird of exquisite colour.
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| Splendid male Fairy Wren |
Interesting to see the koalas in the enclosures although these are not native to the region. They rest high up in the gum trees and are more active at night. We also spotted a western grey kangaroo with a joey in its pouch.
Tuesday evenings are the regular meeting time of the Pelican Point conservation area birders who have met each week since the 1970's I believe. Now that we are back in Perth, I tag along to their walk around this wetland to count the bird species and their numbers. We count 21 species with common sandpiper, red-capped plover, oystercatcher and black winged stilts (known as pied stilts in NZ) among them. We also estimate a flock of at least 300 + little black cormorants that at one point are chased through the water by a powerboat.
As we travel around, I am aware that there are birds everywhere. The local parks and reserves are full of the sounds of birds, and they are constantly flying around. Corellas fly in flocks and around the lakes near Bold Park I watch them roosting in trees. I have also been aware at the number of large dragonflies around the ponds and lakes. At Bibra lake we watched the strangest duck, a Musk duck, propelling itself in the water displaying its tail feathers. It's very unusual.
It was lovely to catch up with Claire who is now working as a Marine biologist. Claire's specialty is seabirds particularly the Australian fairy tern, so this ties up nicely with my interest and volunteer work with the NZ fairy tern over the years. On Saturday we walked out at the sand spit at Point Walter to check the vegetation ahead of the fairy tern arriving to breed from November onwards.
On Monday morning on a walk between Alfred Cove and Applecross Jetty. We watched at least three fairy tern way out diving for fish. There twittering and flickery flight was sure sign of this species. These early arrivals are no doubt checking out nesting sites.
It's always a must do to revisit Rottnest Island an A class reserve just a half an hour's bout ride from Perth. This car free Island is just great to spend a few days on and explore on foot or by bike. I always have to check out the Osprey nests and on in particular. Perfect timing as the two adults on the nest also had a juvenile with them.
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| Osprey stack nest with adult birds and one young bird. |
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| Pelican Point Wetland Reserve |
Explored the wonderful reserves of Lesmurdie and Ellis Brook on the Darling scarp. Ellis Brook was particularly good for wildflowers.
A lucky find in a secondhand bookshop after enjoying a coffee at the Swedish cafe in Fremantle which incidentally serves excellent coffees and food, a clean copy of 'The Flowers of May' by Richard Mabey. I have a collection of Richard Mabey's Natural History books starting with 'Food for Free' which was a great introduction to foraging for wild foods in hedgerows.
It's great to be back on Rottnest Island a wonderful 'A' class reserve a half an hour boat ride away from the Perth mainland at Fremantle. Refreshingly the island is free of cars apart from maintenance vehicles. Cycling is the main means of getting round the island or the bus that runs clockwise every half an hour stopping at the many beautiful white sand beaches. The island has some fascinating wildlife including resident Quokkas.
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| Rottnest Island white sand bays |
I head for one of my favorite Osprey nest sites and sure enough an osprey pair have a juvenile still on the nest. Nearby I watch a pair of kestrels one with a freshly caught small lizard.
I've walked out to Woodman point a few times when in Perth in the hope of spotting Fairy Tern but no sign. Just a kestrel hovering over the sand dunes.
A Sunday visit to the beautiful Araluen Botanical gardens in the Perth Hills which are simply quite stunning. The gardens are 90 years old.
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| Araluen Botanical Gardens |
Penguin Island today a small island I am always tempted to revisit whenever in WA. It's about 45 mins from Perth and a short boat ride from the shore. It's a bird island managed by the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions. It's a great place to see pelicans and Bridled terns and other interesting species. If you are lucky penguins too. Today I was fortunate to meet Erin a penguin researcher who was busy setting up cameras to check the arrival of the penguins and their nesting sites under a coastal boardwalk.
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| Penguin Island Conservation Park |
A farewell few hours spent at Point Walter. Its 35 degrees today so the cooling Easterly breeze of the Swan River is very welcome.
More photos to follow..................