Hi all,
Just thought you might be interested to know that several teams
competed in the Twitchathon here in NZ. Our rules were slightly
different, with any 24-hour period in October being acceptable. This
year the event was organised by my co-competitor, Ian 'Sav' Saville.
Although the numbers of birds recorded here in New Zealand are far
less than in Aus, this almost makes the competition more fierce, as
it really comes down to planning and tactics, although a fair bit of
luck is also involved! I was interested to note however, despite the
relatively large totals in your event, it was a very close game, with
only 2 species seperating first and second for the Vic teams!
As far as I am aware, our team has actually managed to win the event
this year, with a total of 87 species. For the last two years we
have come second, to the 'Plains wanderer's' from Christchurch -
their name being a play on the fact that they come from the
Canterbury plains in the South Island, not due to the bird... This
year we really wanted to give them a run for their money.
Anyway, Sav and I had put considerable thought into planning this
years event, and decided that the only way we were going to win was
by doing a Pelagic trip, and leaving the event till the last weekend
in October, in the hope of picking up a few more waders. So, we set
out from Feilding on Friday afternoon and headed down to Wellington,
catching the ferry across the Cook Strait, with the aim of starting
the clock mid-morning on Saturday. The trip across Cook Strait
yielded good numbers of sooty shearwaters, Westland petrels, fairy
prions and fluttering shearwaters, so we were hopeful of seeing them
on the return trip when the race would actually be underway. We
hired a car and drove down to Kaikoura that night.
The following morning we did a little recon around the Kaikoura
Peninsula, managing to locate a wandering tattler (very rare in NZ -
my first in NZ) and a few other birds (reef heron, turnstones,
cormorants), hoping they would still be there later. Thousands of
Hutton's shearwaters could be seen streaming past offshore. We then
headed up into an area of bush nearby and started the clock at
11:00am - after seeing brown creeper, robin and NZ pigeon. We picked
up a few of the more common farmland birds - goldfinch, chaffinch,
redpoll, starling, etc and also managed to see Californian quail as
we headed back to the coast. Of course the tattler had disappeared,
but we managed to see the reef heron again, along with the
turnstones, cormorants, and the Hutton's were still streaming past.
We then headed out on an Oceanwings pelagic (if you haven't heard
about this one then check out http://www.oceanwings.co.nz) - one of
the only commercial pelagic trips out of NZ and well worth a visit if
you come to NZ.
We picked up a large raft of Hutton's and managed to get excellent
views and a few photos. Heading on from here we suddenly saw a large
penguin on the surface and actually went past as we were going pretty
fast. We quickly turned around and managed to get great views of it
not more than 20m away and quickly realised it was a yellow-eyed
penguin. The first recorded on an Oceanwings pelagic and a bird well
out of its normal range. Heading out further we pulled up beside a
fishing boat and easily ticked off Westland petrel, sooty shearwater,
Northern giant petrel, and Salvin's mollymawk. We moved on out a bit
further and started throwing out a bit of burley (shark livers) and
ended up with quite a few Cape petrels, Westland petrels, and
black-backed gulls around the boat. We were carefully checking the
Westlands for any white-chinneds, some of which had been seen on
recent trips. Also the sooty shearwaters were checked carefully to
make sure there were no short-taileds, again having been seen
recently. Several grey-faced petrels (great-winged) made an
appearance and surprised us by feeding at the back of the boat - one
of them lacked the 'pale-face' and we suspect may have been a P.
macroptera macroptera? A pale phase Southern giant petrel also did
several passes - my first pale phase in NZ - a truely spectacular
bird, and a wandering albatross also put in an appearance. We then
headed back towards the coast, spotting a distant group of dusky
dolphins and saw spotted shag and NZ fur seals on the rocks. We
docked around 3:30 pm and then headed up to Picton to catch the ferry
back across the Cook Strait. On the way we ticked off grey duck
(Pacific black) and then on the ferry crossing (having made it to the
terminal with about 1 minute to spare!) managed to see little blue
penguin and diving petrel and got great views of fluttering
shearwater and fairy prions - checking them all for anything looking
different, but with no success. Nothing else of note, and
surprisingly no mollymawks.
It was dark as we arrived at Wellington and we headed straight back
up to Feilding, stopping at a small patch of bush to listen for and
tick off morepork in light rain. After a few hours sleep up at 5:15
am to light rain and off to the Pohangina Valley nearby to see
sulphur-crested cockatoo (one of the only feral populations in NZ)
and Eastern rosella (an escapee steadily expanding its range in
several parts of NZ). Also got tui and pheasant, then headed towards
Palmerston North, getting a black-fronted dotterel at the Manawatu
river and then Mute swan, coot, and NZ scaup at an urban lake. We
then headed out to the Manawatu Estuary and quickly ticked off
godwit, knot, wrybill and luckily the first curlew sandpiper of the
season had arrived - something we hadn't really counted on. By this
stage we were nearing 84, which is the total the Plains Wanderers had
achieved and so we were starting to feel a little more confident. A
quick visit to a local lake saw a couple of surprises added with
fernbird being heard in a small patch of swamp, and we managed to
call up a spotless crake with a tape. Little black shag was also
added before our last stop of the trip, a patch of bush in the
Tararua Ranges. Here we managed to get tomtit and whitehead,
bringing our total to a triumphant 87 species.
So after travelling well over 1000 kms by car and boat we managed a
grand total of 87 species. This may not seem a lot, but as anyone
that has birded in New Zealand knows, this is a pretty respectable
total. To put it into perspective, after 15+ years of birding in New
Zealand, my NZ list stands at 159, so we saw over half of my list in
24 hours!!!
Anyway, yet again we had a lot of fun participating in this event,
and saw a lot of countryside and some pretty nice birds. Now all we
have to do is start planning next years event.......
Cheers
Brent
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Brent Stephenson
Regional Representative for the
Hawkes Bay Region of the Ornithological Society of New Zealand Inc. (OSNZ)
1A Onslow Road
Napier
New Zealand
WebMaster for the OSNZ's Web site
Phone +06 8336931
Cellphone 025 GANNET (426 638)
Email
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