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Published: September 23rd 2012September 15th 2012
With one successful day done (pelicans and cattle egrets) the next morning we headed with Kerry to the Wenderholm Regional Park just north of Auckland. This was the spot for New Zealand dotterels (one of the endemics I hadn’t seen yet) as well as a good place for banded rails (native) and kookaburras (introduced). There is a bus that goes up in that direction so you don’t need a car to get there, but having one does make it quicker. First bird here for the year list was Californian quail; I wasn’t really expecting to see that one on this trip but a covey ran across the grass up ahead of us as we walked round to the beach where the dotterels hang out. At first it seemed like the dotterels weren’t going to appear, the beach seemed deserted, until a male suddenly flew in from somewhere and basically scuttled up the beach right towards us. I guessed he must have a nest nearby and was trying to lead us away, but the result was some fantastic close views and reasonably good photos. It is a much bigger bird than I’d been anticipating (I had been thinking more the size of a banded dotterel) and also much more attractive. After a while he tired of us and flew down to the waterline where the female was feeding.
Apparently there are kookaburras at Wenderholm but we didn’t see any. The mangroves along the shore are a good spot for banded rails though. I headed to the little stone wharf ahead of the others and caught a quick glimpse of two rails dashing off from the mud-flats into the bushes. They were too distant for me to be able to count them however, and we didn’t find any others while we were there. Then we drove to a small pond at Strakas where we added some New Zealand dabchicks to the list (a lifer for Andy). There was a further chance for banded rail here but again we struck out. Further along the same road, leading into the Upper Waiwera Valley, is the main locality for finding kookaburras. Kerry’s technique is to drive back and forth along the road until he finds one perched on the powerlines. We tried that a couple of times, occasionally calling out “what’s that?!” only to find it was a magpie (at least it was Australian) or a sacred kingfisher (at least it was in the right family) or a mynah (at least it was a bird!). At a small bridge we would turn the car round and try the road in the other direction. After a few passes, Kerry said “we may as well try up the road past the bridge, although I’ve never ever seen a kookaburra up there”. And yet just a couple of minutes up that road, I spotted a kookaburra perched on the powerlines! We jumped out and shot off some photos, then the kookaburra flew down to the ground to snatch up some small prey item and flew off up the road. We were about to follow when I noticed the tree overhanging the road up ahead had what looked suspiciously like two kookaburras sitting in it, and so it proved to be. Andy headed towards them on foot, but being used to the unshockable kookaburras in Australia Kerry and I thought it would be easier to drive to them. Er, turns out Andy was right. Both the kookaburras flew out of the tree and away. I guess Andy was due for being right about something. We did find the pair again, sitting on the T of a power-pole, and got a few photos, but then they disappeared for good.
The next morning was the obligatory (for a birder) trip to the sewage ponds. The Mangere WastewaterTreatment Plant is a renowned site for waders, in particular wrybills during the winter, and that was a bird Andy was really keen to see for the first time. Wrybills are a little endemic wader with a weird sideways-bent beak, used for probing under stones. They breed on the braided river beds of the South Island but winter elsewhere, especially around the Auckland area. There honestly wasn’t much around Mangere, it being a bit late for the wintering birds but a bit early for the summering birds, but there were wrybills there which was good, and also some lesser knots amongst the bar-tailed godwits.
Kerry only had the morning free that day, so in the afternoon Andy and I went to Kelly Tarltons. We had to stand in line for 25 minutes before even getting into the place (it was a Saturday), and even being fish people we were done in thirty minutes. Shockingly poor value for money. The spiny sea-dragons were very cool though. Kelly Tarltons has recently been taken over by SeaLife, the McDonalds of the aquarium world. They buy out big public aquariums (most recently Melbourne, Sydney, Manly and Mooloolaba in Australia) and re-fit them into exactly the same aquarium as every other SeaLife aquarium. Every aquarium they touch they ruin.
