Farewell Spit Eco Tours Blog

This group of Godwits are resting on the ocean beach of Farewell spit having fed for the previous 6 hours or so on the vast flats exposed when the tide went out in Golden Bay. They are fuelling up ready for the flight to Korea where they will stop for two weeks or so, gorge themselves on marine food then fly to Alaska to begin the nesting part of the cycle.

Here is our " salute to old Collingwood buildings"

During the Winter we "had the builders in" they remodelled our office replaced the cladding on the facade and gave us a lovely long verandah.

The Gannets are returning to the Spit end colony and are gathering nesting material to start the next breeding season.

They collect kelp and seaweed from the beach along with other debris soon there will be thousands of them jostling for the best position on the conical shelly banks 2 km. or so beyond the Lighthouse.

One of the local school bus drivers and local school caretaker Bill Climo found a Giant Petrel wandering on the roadside at Puponga near the beginning of Farewell Spit recently.

Luckily our office in the main street of Collingwood is a Petrel station so he dropped in to show us the big bird on his way to the home of one of our local ornithologists who takes in wounded or un-well birds. Sadly this one didn’t make it and an autopsy was held and it was discovered that it had a virus in it’s gut.

We took their photo and put it on the website here.

Unfortunately we were too far away to revive it with our Petrel pump.

The Garden Gnomes from around the world and even Nelson are planning to converge on Collingwood near Farewell Spit in Golden Bay for the second "A Gnome away from Home weekend" in the last weekend of August.

Have a look at last year’s movie below.

For the last several days Whale spouts have been seen near Cape Farewell at the beginning of Farewell Spit.

Farewell Spit Eco Tours guides and clients have had a grandstand view from the clifftops and a pod of 4 were seen yesterday, we think they are Humpback Whales. They migrate at this time of year and it is a rare treat to have them hanging around our part of the world. Have a look here at one of the spouts just beyond a boiling school of fish.

Last year transmitters were implanted into female Godwits to track their migration to Alaska.

This year the researchers are fitting them to male birds in the firth of Thames on the North Island here you can see the video shown on TVNZ last night.

Just two weeks ago the beach in front of the Farewell Spit lighthouse was as flat as a flat thing that had just been through a press.

Now though with just a few windy days many small dunes have formed and are tumbling toward the end of the Spit.

The westerly wind is responsible for this.

Whilst returning along the beach the other night a Skua was spied chasing a White fronted Tern.

Now the purpose of this was not to eat the Tern but to make it regurgitate the fish it had recently caught and was happily digesting as the sun set into the sea.

Quite a dramatic aerobatic performance ensued with the Tern almost looping the loop as it evaded the Skua. Eventually though, the inevitable happened and the Tern threw up the fish, the Skua swallowing it before it had fallen ten metres.

We do not see many Skuas but they are very dramatic when they appear.

The 30th and 31st of August are the dates for the second annual "A Gnome away from home " weekend.

Have a look here to see what they got up to last year.