Aotea Harbour Census Feb 2024
I recently had the opportunity to go to the Aotea Harbour Shorebird Census. This happens three times a year. It’s important for it to be run as this harbour is very remote, and only accessible by boat. It’s run by the Waikato branch of the Ornithological Society of New Zealand.
We met early on a Sunday morning at the Waikato Department of Conservation office. We took a ute straight out to the harbour, where we met the skipper at the boat ramp. We jumped in the boat, with three people (including me) heading to the main shorebird roost and another two people going around the harbour outskirts by boat. I was going to the main roost, Potahi Point, a headland protruding from the remote northern area of the harbour. As the boat braved the waves we could already see some Bar-tailed Godwit (a migratory species of bird that breeds in Alaska, and migrates south to Australia and New Zealand for our summer) fly past. These were the first of many, because as we got closer to the headland we could see a huge flock of them roosting.
The skipper dropped us off on Potahi Point, and we started walking out to the best viewing area for the large flock. We set up telescopes here, and started to count the shorebirds. We counted a huge number of godwits, with 1854 roosting in a large flock. There were also Pied Oystercatchers amongst the flock, with about 850 hiding behind the godwits.
We then scanned through the flock. I managed to spot several rare birds hiding amongst them, including a Whimbrel, a rare visitor to our shores with very few making it to New Zealand each year, and three Red Knot, one of the first records for this harbour but a common species in other areas further north. We then headed over to the ocean side of the point to see what we could find.
On the ocean side of the point there was a small New Zealand Dotterel racing around. A flock of 10 Pied Shags sat on the beach, staring up at us standing on the sand dunes above them. Huge gusts of wind blasted into our faces. We set up to look offshore in hopes off spotting some seabirds blown in by the wind. There were well over 100 Fluttering Shearwater cruising along the waves offshore. A bunch of gannets elegantly flew over, and an all dark shearwater (we didn’t see it well enough to identify) shot past.
We looked back from where we’d come from and saw that the boat was approaching from in the distance. So we climbed down from the sand dune and walked back just in time, where we met the skipper. Everybody was happy after seeing the Whimbrel on the drive home, and we exchanged stories with the people who had gone to the other areas of the harbour. It was a great day out!
On the drive back I asked the organiser of the surveys, Jeanette Brooker, about why the conservation work is important. She told me about the East Asian-Australasian flyway, and how the Ornithological Society and the Department of Conservation had agreed to run censuses to different shorebird roosts in New Zealand to document the birds that fly through Eastern Asia on their routes from Australia and New Zealand to places like Siberia and Alaska to breed. New Zealand wasn’t the only country running censuses; many others throughout these bird’s flyways run them as well. The data is put together to keep track of the declines and increases of numbers of different migratory species.
I’ll definitely be back for the next census!
By Caiden Binzegger
Wader counts:
South Island Pied Oystercatcher x850
Bar-tailed Godwit x1854
Banded Dotterel x120
New Zealand Dotterel x2
Whimbrel x1
Red Knot x3
Variable Oystercatcher x4
Cover photo - Bar-tailed Godwit © Caiden Binzegger
