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ashely weed removal
October 8, 2020

Creating bird habitat

Title image: prior to the bird breeding season, commercial shingle extraction in the Ashley-Rakahuri river has cleared away weeds, and started to dig the channel which will create an island where the tractor is working. The tractor-mounted undercutter is making the site more attractive for bird breeding by roughing up the shingle surface.

Ashley-Rakahuri Riverbed Group members, Grant Davey and I, have just returned from the local riverbed, where the breeding season for indigenous species such as the ngutupare wrybill and pohowaru banded dotterel has been underway for about a month. We visited a site where much effort has gone into creating a desirable habitat for bird breeding.

Over the winter, prior to the breeding season, a local company, Taggarts Earthmoving Ltd, had extracted shingle from this site. Before they left, they made sure all weeds were removed, as it is well known that most braided river birds must have clean, weed-free shingle on which to nest.  And over recent years there has not been the cleansing floods of sufficient size to clear away the increasingly invasive lupins, broom, gorse and blackberry.  To complement this removal of the densest weeds, the Group has helped to develop a tractor-mounted undercutter to clear weeds from selected stretches of the river.  Not only does the machine uproot weeds, but it creates the loose, coarse shingle surface most favoured by the birds. Our studies have shown that compacted or sandy surfaces are not so attractive to them.  

Last August, we used the machine to clear almost 40ha of riverbed.  Plus we got Taggarts to channel water across the tail end of their extraction site in order to create an island, which predators would find more difficult to access.  However, as the old proverb says ‘one can take a horse to water, but one cannot force it to drink’.  It is the same with the birds, one can create what one considers to be desirable nesting sites, but there is no guarantee that they will use them.  Past experience has endorsed that.

But, this morning we observed the hoped-for and long-awaited results of our habitat creation endeavours.  This is the reason why I sit here in front of my keyboard at home with a wider smile than usual.

As we waded across to the island earlier today, we noticed a movement amongst the stones.  It was a female wrybill scuttling away through the stones, the give-away that there must be a nest nearby. So we retreated a short distance, and sure enough she soon came scuttling back and quickly settled down some 40m away.  We waited a couple of minutes, taking careful note of the rock shapes and shades adjacent to where she was sitting. We did this, as seeing a wrybill settle on a nest is one thing – actually finding the nest is another. It is just a small-stone lined depression in the shingle and the eggs are the same colour as the grey-wacke rocks surrounding it.  But find it we did, and while the adult bird gave us a broken-wing ‘distraction display’ just a few meters from us, Grant used his field tablet to photograph and GPS the nest location. 

The island is finished and Group member, Grant Davey, is using his field tablet to photograph and GPS the nest of a wrybill pair which have chosen to breed in this deliberately prepared site.  Their nest is almost precisely where the tractor was working (6 weeks earlier) in the photo at the top of this post.
The island is finished and Group member, Grant Davey, is using his field tablet to photograph and GPS the nest of a wrybill pair which have chosen to breed in this deliberately prepared site. Their nest is almost precisely where the tractor was working (6 weeks earlier) in the photo at the top of this post.

As we backed off, she quickly returned to shuffle down onto her eggs, appearing so relaxed that Grant crawled forward to take a few close-ups with his point-and-shoot camera.  Within barely 10 minutes of first seeing the bird we were happily on our way back to the wagon for the drive home.

Nick Ledgard

Grant taking a close-up photo of the female wrybill on her nest. Some birds are not disturbed by such intimacy, whilst others will disappear when one is still 50m away.
Grant taking a close-up photo of the female wrybill on her nest. Some birds are not disturbed by such intimacy, whilst others will disappear when one is still 50m away.
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Recent Posts

  • Gull disturbance January 19, 2021
  • Group update Jan 2021 January 17, 2021
  • 2020 Annual Bird Survey November 28, 2020
  • Creating bird habitat October 8, 2020
  • Group update September 20, 2020
  • Weed Removal Report August 5, 2020
  • Aspects of the Ashley Weed Problem June 11, 2020
  • Black-fronted Tern and Black-billed Gull colonies, 2019 – 2020 Season April 18, 2020
  • Overhead Line Bird Kill February 11, 2020
  • Fire and trapping update February 11, 2020
  • Drying river rewards birds February 3, 2020
  • Survey of the lower part of the Okuku River: November 2019 January 21, 2020
  • Lees Valley – Okuku and Ashley-Rakahuri Rivers: 2019 Breeding Season January 21, 2020
  • Ashley River & Estuary trapping update January 9, 2020
  • Ashley-Rakahuri Rivercare Group update December 13, 2019
  • Ashley River & Estuary Trapping Update December 3, 2019
  • Annual survey (Nov 16, 2019) results November 24, 2019
  • Black-billed gulls looking to nest October 24, 2019
  • Ashley Update: October 2019 October 13, 2019
  • Use of the Ashley-Rakahuri berm September 5, 2019

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Photos: Grant Davey, Steve Attwood, Lynley Cook, John Dowding and Nick Ledgard © 2019 All Rights Reserved