Normally I go up to the Waikanae Estuary around the start of the year for waders and suchlike birds. It's not exactly a convenient place for me to get to (about three hours on two buses and a train) but it is otherwise the easiest place to pick up a lot of the non-urban birds. I didn't go there this year because I went for a trip around the upper North Island in February where I saw most of those species.
I was having to pass by the estuary today though, so I stopped to add Banded Dotterels to the year-list; and then afterwards stopped in at the Otaki Sewage Ponds a bit further north for Black-fronted Dotterels (self-introduced from Australia in the 1950s, and now distributed patchily around the country).
For anyone unfamiliar and interested, Block Island represents the furthest southern extent of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and is made of glacial till deposited from the glacier as it retreated.
For anyone unfamiliar and interested, Block Island represents the furthest southern extent of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and is made of glacial till deposited from the glacier as it retreated.
That's interesting. I've only ever heard the name before in the Billy Joel song 'The Downeaster Alexa' - 2nd line 'sailing through Block Island Sound'....
That's interesting. I've only ever heard the name before in the Billy Joel song 'The Downeaster Alexa' - 2nd line 'sailing through Block Island Sound'....
Certainly a lot of people sailing through to this day!
The island is comprised of mainly Cretaceous Period rock, with two halves of the island comprised of different compositions of rock as a result of two lobes of the glacier meeting here and pushing rocks of two different origins together. There are a lot of freshwater ponds throughout the island due to chunks of ice getting left behind as the glacier receded and creating large water-filled impressions. When sea levels were lower Block Island was connected to Long Island, allowing native wildlife to settle and become trapped once sea levels rose. I'd be interested to see an ecological study conducted on the natives here to see if there's been any slight divergence over the last few tens of thousands of years.
Long time since an update from me! Between heat, smoke, and not traveling new species have been fairly slow. But got a fair few to update and things should still start picking up here soon with arrival of cooler weather so here I am again.
The highlight of it all was obviously the weasel, which is a species that although common isn't super hard to find here so I was delighted when one crossed my path at the fields near Aghorimze and started jumping and running until it disappeared in the shrubbery.
The harrier, though, comes close behind and it was fantastic to be able to observe it for more than half an hour as it was hunting, creating panic among the migrant waders at my local spot. The reed warbler is also a nice tick as I've certainly seen one before but this is the first time I got good enough views to tell apart this migrant species from the very similar locally breeding African reed warbler.
All these additions might pale in comparison to what could be coming this week though...
the first week of septeber is falsterbo birds show every year the swedish bird fair. it on the south tip of sweaden alos the closest land way to denmark wich makes huge numbers of migrants going this way. got to sped 3 day here for the first time and had a great time. tho it wasent the greatest migration weather ever. still nice birding and a great to meat meany well now swedish birders for the first time. anyhow here is the new aditons
146 red kite Milvus milvus
147 black kite Milvus migrans
148 paild harrier Circus macrourus swedish lifer
149 merrlin Falco columbarius
150 black tailed godwit
151 bar tailed godwit
152 pied avocet : Recurvirostra avosetta
153 common cuckoo Cuculus canorus
154 sandwich tern Thalasseus sandvicensis
155 tawny pipit Anthus campestris
and from this weekend
156 Red-necked grebe Podiceps grisegena
mammals
16 common seal Phoca vitulina
17 european rabit Oryctolagus cuniculus
For anyone unfamiliar and interested, Block Island represents the furthest southern extent of the Laurentide Ice Sheet and is made of glacial till deposited from the glacier as it retreated.
the first week of septeber is falsterbo birds show every year the swedish bird fair. it on the south tip of sweaden alos the closest land way to denmark wich makes huge numbers of migrants going this way. got to sped 3 day here for the first time and had a great time. tho it wasent the greatest migration weather ever. still nice birding and a great to meat meany well now swedish birders for the first time. anyhow here is the new aditons
146 red kite Milvus milvus
147 black kite Milvus migrans
148 paild harrier Circus macrourus swedish lifer
149 merrlin Falco columbarius
150 black tailed godwit
151 bar tailed godwit
152 pied avocet : Recurvirostra avosetta
153 common cuckoo Cuculus canorus
154 sandwich tern Thalasseus sandvicensis
155 tawny pipit Anthus campestris
and from this weekend
156 Red-necked grebe Podiceps grisegena
mammals
16 common seal Phoca vitulina
17 european rabit Oryctolagus cuniculus
i wood like to remove the seal for now cose i dident keep into cout that grey seal are about as common in the area. i dident look to hard at the seals i saw. and i stillthink some of them must have bean common but cat be 100% at the moment so
i am one 16 with european rabit Oryctolagus cuniculus
the first week of septeber is falsterbo birds show every year the swedish bird fair. it on the south tip of sweaden alos the closest land way to denmark wich makes huge numbers of migrants going this way. got to sped 3 day here for the first time and had a great time. tho it wasent the greatest migration weather ever. still nice birding and a great to meat meany well now swedish birders for the first time. anyhow here is the new aditons
146 red kite Milvus milvus
147 black kite Milvus migrans
148 paild harrier Circus macrourus swedish lifer
149 merrlin Falco columbarius
150 black tailed godwit
151 bar tailed godwit
152 pied avocet : Recurvirostra avosetta
153 common cuckoo Cuculus canorus
154 sandwich tern Thalasseus sandvicensis
155 tawny pipit Anthus campestris
and from this weekend
156 Red-necked grebe Podiceps grisegena
mammals
16 common seal Phoca vitulina
17 european rabit Oryctolagus cuniculus
We should have been celebrating Moonlit's 20th Anniversary this weekend. However mostly spent at home under lockdown with some exercise in the Sanctuary. There are some advantages to having your own zoo.
Since I visited Tenerife in early 2019, I've been really interested in the island wildlife of Europe. As a bit of a graduation gift, my parents took me to another island for a short 5 day trip: Mallorca!
The entire trip was a lot of fun, and granted me 7 bird lifers: three (near-)endemics, and a bunch of other nice southern European species I had been missing until now. Special highlights go to the Marbled ducks and Red-knobbed coots that showed incredibly, the Balearic warblers that were actually surprisingly difficult, and of course Balearic shearwater which is one of the most threatened seabirds on the planet. The hedgehogs and wall lizards were great as well!
Also, I finally took the time to summarize a few more of my inverts. These are a mixture from the France, England and Mallorca trips and some from Belgium between them:
I've seen hundreds of Little Egrets in Asia but only one in New Zealand, which was almost a decade ago in Auckland. They aren't a regular species to see in New Zealand but when one does turn up from Australia it often hangs around in the same place for years. There is currently one living at the Foxton Estuary which my sister mentioned last week as having seen so this weekend I went up to her place, which is about two hours north for me (by bus and train), and we drove up to Foxton which is about another twenty minutes by car.
There was a bit of an issue at the start of the intended egret search with a body unfortunately being found on the mudflats, so the main birding area was then cordoned off by the police (Body found at Manawatū Estuary likely to be missing fisherman), but once all was clear it was on with the birding. Of course an estuary is quite big and a Little Egret is quite little, so naturally it wasn't until pretty much the entire walkway along the shore had been walked and we had decided that the egret was simply a no-show this day, that I - at the last minute - spotted it perched on a log further up-river. There was no longer any track to walk but some clambering along the rocks of the shoreline resulted in some closer views.
There was another interesting animal sighting this morning as well, but I'm not counting it on my year-list. While on the train from Wellington, I saw several people standing in the Porirua harbour splashing at some black objects in front of them. (This harbour is more like a shallow estuary, mostly only a couple of feet deep and you can almost wade across the entire thing). I thought they were whitebaiting although their positioning in the harbour was weird. Anyway, it turned out later that there were three Dusky Dolphins which had got themselves lost and the people were actually attempting to rescue them. The black objects I'd seen were the dolphins' fins. At the latest news one of the dolphins had died but the other two had been safely returned to the ocean. (One of three dolphins stuck in Porirua Harbour dies after showing signs of distress). I'm not counting them on my year-list because I didn't even know I'd seen them until I heard the news about it later and connected the dots.
We should have been celebrating Moonlit's 20th Anniversary this weekend. However mostly spent at home under lockdown with some exercise in the Sanctuary. There are some advantages to having your own zoo.
In an odd post for me, some new birds but no new insects. The migratory birds are now passing through.
Birds:
81. Yellow-throated vireo (Vireo flavifrons)
82. American redstart (Setophaga ruticilla)
83. Field sparrow (Spizella pusilla)
A short trip to far southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois yielded some new birds, even if it wasn't the primary focus of the trip and I didn't have my camera for some of the warblers.
