Winter Supplementary Feeding of Garden Birds

 Winter supplementary feeding of garden birds is helpful when natural food sources are less abundant. Silvereye love grapefruit and cutting one in half like this and impaling it on a tree soon attracts a little group of these birds.

 Once winter has passed its best to let the birds source their own food. It's safer for them. Any food dishes used should be regularly scrubbed to prevent diseases being passed between birds and different species.

Wrybill arrived in March

 Our flock of wrybill return to our local estuary usually in March/April to avoid the South Island cool winters. Initially just four then eight then 35 of these delightful unique birds with their bent to the right bills.

We have had higher numbers than this. The most counted were 103 in 2015.

ABS Talk Forest Succession on rainfall driven landslides.

 The Auckland Botanical Society talk last evening at Unitec was by Elizabeth Williams the recipient of the 2025 Lucy Cranwell grant.

With so many slips occurring around the Auckland region due to increased heavy rainfall this is a subject that helps understand the vegetation both natural and exotic that follows these event

Smaller slips occur around our local estuary some due to coastal development and risk adding exotic and pest plants to this fragile environment.

Tara iti annual hui 2026

 Yesterday was the Department of Conservation 2026 annual Fairy Tern hui at Wellsford. This is always well attended by people active in the conservation of this threatened species.

Adult Fairy Tern with prey 13.01.2014

Yesterday we heard some engaging talks about the remarkable work being carried out to save this species from extinction by DOC staff and many volunteers.

This year a special edition of the Birds NZ Notornis publication including many research papers and current information of research into this vulnerable New Zealand species, our rarest bird species.

Notornis Fairy Tern edition March 2026

 I have included a few of my NZ Fairy tern photos taken during my volunteering for conservation projects to assist this vulnerable species from heading to extinction. 

Time was spent on the Pakiri coast from 2012 to 2019 helping the DOC ranger and on the Kaipara coast from 2014 to 2019 helping with a Forest & Bird funded project to create another nesting site away from the people populated East coast where most Fairy Tern choose to nest

Juvenil Fairy Tern learning to fish 13.01.2014

Unlike Australia our Fairy Tern (FT) numbers are very low. Recently captive rearing has increased the population from around 40 to 50 birds. Australia FT number in the thousands but they too have problems of competition with humans for space at their coastal nesting and roosting sites