Welcome The Godwits

 Today was our annual welcome to the Godwits held at Sandy Bay Reserve. This is a great opportunity to show residents and visitors these amazing bar-tailed godwit that have flown nearly 12,000 kms to spend the summer with us before heading back North to Alaska to breed. With high power scopes and binoculars, we are able to study the birds from the shoreline.

 Estuaries across New Zealand attract different numbers of godwits depending on the availability of food to sustain the birds until they leave in March. We usually have a flock around 200 each year including juvenile godwit that amazingly find their way unaided to our estuary.

Godwit Welcome in the sunshine 

The tide brings the godwits closer after feeding at low tide. 

A few short talks to share information about our visitors from Alaska

Big Sky

'Big Sky' and 'Out of Africa', were two excellent descriptions I heard from visitors today at the  Pukorokoro (Miranda) shorebird Centre when visiting the hides and observing the birds.

Those wonderful descriptions came from a chance meeting with fellow Auckland Botanical members, Geoff and Helen. Geoff and his wife Bev had been hosting an upcoming speaker Marcela Sanchez from Argentina.

 Marcela was to be the Inaugural Alistair MacArthur speaker to our meeting the following Wednesday.  Marcela also had an interest in birds and that's why she was at the Shorebird Centre with Geoff and Helen at the weekend.

Talk: Flora of Argentina (and neighbouring countries-Southern Cone) and the relationships with NZ through Gondwana species, with an emphasis on Orchids.

Presented by: Marcela I. Sanchez, President (Board of Directors) Argentine Network of Botanical Gardens: Hurlingham, Buenos Aires. 

Marcela gave an excellent presentation with many images of the wonderful flora throughout Argentina.