Just Stunning !

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....................

Pukorokoro Fly By

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.

eBird Team Talk

 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.