Farewell Spit Eco Tours Blog

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.

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.

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.

A group of six Wrybill posed for their photograph about halfway along the ocean beach on Farewell Spit.

The wrybill are only seen from the bus a handful of times in a season. those who came out on a rather bleak day were rewarded with a rare sighting.

Compare the size with that of the oystercatcher in the right of the picture.

The annual Swan count has just been done and there are about 9900 of them on the intertidal plain of the Spit. The Black Swan originally came from Australia, probably blown over in storms. Then in the 1860s  more  were introduced as game birds. They thrive on the Spit as there seems to be an unending supply of zostera (Eelgrass) for them to eat. Last year there were about 6000 Swan and there have been up to 14000 in the past.

Murray’s last trip for the year provided him the opportunity to see the Curlew again, last time out about 3 days ago he saw four of them. The Far Eastern Curlew are the largest of the migratory waders to visit the Spit and we do not see them often. They are similar in size to a White Faced Heron and almost the same colour as a Godwit.

We have been expecting to see Variable Oystercatcher chicks for the past week or two but have seen none. Until today that is!

The little rascals have been keeping well out of sight untl today. Tim and Elaine saw five pairs between them, ranging from a day or two old to just fledged.

There have been numerous sightings of banded birds on the trips this summer.

More so this year than any other.

John saw a Godwit with a yellow flag or band on each leg today they were high on the left leg and low on the right.

The Gannet colony is about 2km. beyond the Lighthouse and on our last visit to the colony we saw the first chicks of the season.

Also nearby the first Caspian Tern babies were visible. There are about 75 pairs of Caspian Terns nesting on the end of the Spit they mate for life and can be seen all year in the vicinity.