Walked down to my local beach on Saturday, as the tide was at it's lowest extent, so I went down there with the original intent being to walk to a rocky island only exposed in the low tide, as so I could observe and play around with the fauna trapped in the tidepools. Although this I unexpectedly got sidetracked after seeing a brown-ish shore bird type job. Something that I would've never expected at my local beach as a) I've never seen anything except oystercatchers and gulls there (tough this could be chocked up with me hardly ever going outside, in the years that I've lived here) and b) its winter! What would a migrating shorebird be doing here? This led me to abandon my sandals which were weighing me down, and go on a 20 minute chase trying to get id'able photos of the bird, realising it was some sort of godwit in the process. After, getting enough photos which I thought would do well, I went back to collect my sandals with them not being there anymore! Leading to a further 20 minutes of me walking loops around the empty mudflats searching for them, in my desperation returning to the godwit, which I then looked into the waves and saw black objects bobbing up and down, my sandals having apparently been swept out to sea! After reclaiming them, I quickly left the beach, as I saw grey clouds looming ahead my return being drowned in rain, and cutting my excursion short. I got an id of the godwit which I'm pretty sure is it, considering the fact that apparently bar-tailed godwit juveniles stay year round here.
Birds
31. Bar-tailed Godwit (Limosa lapponica)
Welp, I was meant to get this update posted around October, but I kinda forgot to write a prose, and it's been far too long, so I'll replace it with an update for a trip to Mangere that I took nearly a week back. (Nothing really happened with the first update anyways, just got unsatisfactory viewing of grey gerygone which I'm still trying to get a better sighting of).
So off to Mangere I headed taking the bus, with newfound confidence finally having usable data as to check the bus timetables. Which 'stopped working', whilst I was on Tik Tok at a bus station, thinking nothing of it as the location tracking on the AT app was still functioning I carried on, (this comes to bite me in the ass later on). Arriving in Mangere, I realised I had entirely scuffed up the tide time schedule, (having been checking East Auckland tides, instead of Mangere tides), resulting in me having to squint at the distant blurs of colour that just so happened to be birdlike, although I feel like having binocs would've been a major help, so I guess I'll try and scrounge myself up a pair, before I try birding here again. I think I may have seen a grey teal, but even if it was I'd rather not count such a poor viewing. So I quickly scurried on to the lagoon, which happened to be crudely fenced off, so after scrabbling up and down some rocks managed to get on the walkway. Although it was low tide, so I was just trying to make my way down to the waterworks as fast as possible, but I seemed to have to disturbed the flocks of pied stilts there, or maybe it was the gulls not really sure. What I did see however, was maybe around 4 to 5 of them circling me, actually flying really close to me, enabling fantastic views and even a decent picture!
(Impressive considering the fact that all I have is a shoddy iPhone 6 camera which seems to never be able to focus on any moving lifeform more than a metre away). I hope I wasn't disturbing them whilst they were nesting, but from my perspective, I had an hour here until the sun set, so I was making sure I at least had something to add on my year count. Arriving at the waterworks, I could barely see any of the birds, which makes me really wish I had binocs, and the only birds I got good viewings on were flocks of mallards/grey duck hybrids (saw no green heads, but did see orange feet), the occasional welcome swallow and the black swans. Which I was hesitant to put on my list, but after some consideration on that it wouldn't be any different from seeing them in a park in their homeland of Aus, and after seeing a pair of cygnets, I'm placing them on my list. I also saw what were possibly shovelers, probably a dabchick and maybe a scaup, viewings which I was entirely dissatisfied of so I exclude them from my list. After leaving the waterworks and finally realising that my phone had no more data (apparently 5 minutes of Tik Tok makes 20 dollars go down the drain!!!), terrified of being stranded in a location far from home at night, I flagged down a passing car asking to use their hotspot as to find an AT route home. Shockinglly they were ok with it! And super friendly during the entire thing! An hour during my route home although, my bus dropped me off just in a highway and shoddy signage led me to believe there was no more buses going my way. Leading me to walk 2 hours home during the night, as I watched not one but TWO! Of the buses I needed to catch speed pass me.
Was me going here worth it, considering how poor the majority of the sightings I had were and the painful trek I took home at the end ? No, absolutely not. But at least I got two lifers from it and I was planning on putting an update to this thread one way or another, so at least I have that.
Birds
32.
Grey Gerygone (
Gerygone igata)
33. European Greenfinch (
Chloris chloris)
34.
Pied Stilt (
Himantopus leucocephalus)
35.
Black Swan (
Cygnus atratus)
Invertebrates
12. Bronze Hopper (
Helpis minitabunda)
(I really hope I don't end this year with only 35 birds, but that's probably how it'll pan out, but considering how I surpassed my original granted very pessimistic goal and 7 lifers I'd say this year was still quite good, especially being my first foray into birding and all).
(Stilt photo to be added).
