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Chlidonias versus Samoa

Discussion in 'Samoa' started by Chlidonias, 25 May 2013.

  1. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    I think I must have read too many Boys Own books* when I was a lad.





    *For people of a murkier mind, not what you're thinking!! Shame on you!
     
  2. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    KAIKOURA (19-20 May)

    The rain continued but not enough to put a halt to anything. In the morning I got the bus north to Kaikoura, seabird capital of the world. About halfway is St. Anne’s Lagoon, a small lake just out of Cheviot, which is home to the only “tickable” Cape Barren geese in New Zealand. There has been a population breeding here for at least several decades, and they are the only ones in the country for which you don’t need to fill out a UBR (Unusual Bird Report) if you see them. Of course the bus doesn’t stop at the lake for any passengers who happen to be birders, but if you are lucky you can sometimes spy one or two grazing as the bus roars past, as I did. The lake is worth a visit if in a car though. I’ve seen an Australian shelduck there, and New Zealand’s only recorded Australian reed warbler was found there too.

    In Kaikoura I stayed at the Sunrise Lodge. I’ve tried a few different backpackers in Kaikoura over the years; I think Sunrise Lodge has to be the nicest. They have free use of mountain bikes for their guests which is handy for getting around! The only people staying there were myself and a very nice German girl. Once check-in was sorted I biked to the Albatross Encounter building to make sure their boat was still going out at 1pm (the swell was “moderate” I was told, which in landlubber-speak probably meant “horrific”), and then on to the NZ fur seal colony at the end of the peninsula. On the hill above the colony is where one looks for cirl buntings, the rarest of the country’s introduced finchy birds. I saw a pair but they were a bit too far away to be 100% sure they weren’t the much more common yellowhammers. I’d try again tomorrow.

    Back to the Albatross Encounter I went. The other passengers on the trip were a tour group of nine people, which I had naturally assumed would be a birding group but instead turned out to be a group of Bed & Breakfast owners from Christchurch on a famil. Normally the first pelagic birds to appear when one goes out on this boat are the cute-as-a-button Cape petrels (also called Cape pigeons which confuses any non-birders) but today the first bird was a northern giant petrel, followed by a Gibson’s albatross, then a couple of mollymawks, and then the Cape petrels started flowing in. The sea was rather rough (three metre swells); I had been going to take photos but looking through a viewfinder brings on sea-sickness so I just used my eyes and remained un-sea-sick. At Kaikoura there’s a deep trench right off the coast so instead of motoring for hours as overseas pelagic boats have to do, here you are right amongst the birds within fifteen minutes or so. It’s great!! The boat stopped, the basket of frozen chum went off the back, and there was an immediate scrum of giant petrels and Gibson’s albatrosses surrounded by a carpet of Cape petrels grabbing at the scraps. The mollymawks all hung around the outskirts out of the way. The species seen here changes through the year. Right now there were southern Buller’s (the most attractive one!), white-capped and the stern-looking black-browed mollymawks. A few Westland black petrels and short-tailed petrels zipped back and forth but the overall numbers weren’t very good on this trip. One of the women passengers was looking decidedly green so the skipper shortened the trip. I ride the albatross boat for free so I don’t complain about that, especially as I was planning on going out on the 9am boat the next morning if the weather allowed.

    The next morning was blue and sunny, despite the forecast for continuing rain. There were just three other people on the morning boat and there were a lot more birds, both in numbers of individuals and species. As well as all the species seen yesterday there were also southern and northern royal albatrosses, and an out-of-season Salvin’s mollymawk. There were also a couple of white-chinned petrels but I didn’t get onto them in time. To give an idea of the difference in bird numbers between the two trips, today there were about 14 Gibson’s albatrosses versus 7 yesterday; 10 black-browed mollymawks versus 3; 35 white-capped mollymawks versus 4; 120 Cape petrels versus 30. (The numbers taken from the tally the skipper keeps). The sea was pretty smooth so I got lots of photos, some of which were usable! On the way back to shore we also encountered a friendly pod of five or six Hector’s dolphins.

    After the boat trip I cycled back out to the seal colony to have another crack at the cirl buntings. Again I saw what I’m almost certain was a pair but they were just slightly too far away to be entirely 100% sure, so they never made it onto my year list. I also kept an eye on the sea for humpback whales which are migrating past at this time of year but none were to be seen.
     
  3. zooboy28

    zooboy28 Well-Known Member

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    Sounds like you had a pretty good trip all up Chlidonias, even if you did miss the tooth-billed pigeon. I don't think I would be particularly good at heading out into the bush alone, or with a local guide, when in a foreign country, it would freak me out a bit. I think a tour-based option would be best for me, although obviously significantly more expensive.

    I haven't done any sea bird/whale watching boat trips, but really want to do the Kaikoura one sometime (although one in Auckland will probably happen sooner). Do they ID all the sea birds for you?
     
  4. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    my trips are always good, even if they are bad :D

    The thing with travelling is that no matter what happens along the way the good memories are the ones you keep, and the bad things make good stories.

    With regards to pelagic trips, the Kaikoura one is fantastic, especially good if you tend towards sea-sickness because it's not too long. The skipper IDs all the birds as they appear and you get the tally-sheet at the end if you want a record to keep. The whale watching boat at Kaikoura is not much good for birds, and if they do attempt an ID it is of the nature of "there's an albatross over there...". The Auckland Whale Safari isn't as interested in birds as it is cetaceans, and frankly I can't even understand what they are saying over the intercom (it is a bigger boat than the Kaikoura one); I think you'd be lucky to get any good IDs of birds from the crew of the Whale Safari trip. The one I went on last year wouldn't even stop for birds they were so intent on finding dolphins. I haven't done the Australian pelagics but they sound good (there are fairly regular ones off Sydney and Tasmania....I'm not sure about Melbourne?)
     
  5. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    FINAL DAY: ARTHURS PASS (21 May)

    Last part of the voyage home, from Christchurch to Arthurs Pass. I stayed at the Mountain House Backpackers as I always do, where I had a dorm room to myself. The bus gets into Arthurs Pass Village at about 9.30 am so you’ve got the whole day there even if only staying overnight. I headed off up the Bridal Veil track which leads through forest almost all the way to the top of the pass. Curiously there were no kea around the village so the first bird to add to the year list today was a tomtit just at the entrance to the forest. I saw a kea in the forest a little while later, but no brown creepers or riflemen which were the other two bush birds I was after. I’d be coming back down the same way however, so after leaving the forest I walked on up the road towards the top.

    Apart for forest birds I was also searching for rock wrens and blue ducks. For the rock wrens I normally go up the Otira Valley but this time I tried the Temple Basin track for the first time. It is quite a lot steeper and rougher than the Otira track! I didn’t find any rock wrens up there but as I went higher and higher (the clouds were below me!) I figured I may as well look out for chamois, and to my complete and utter surprise I found a pair of them on an opposite slope, picking their way across a scree. I hadn’t seen a “new” mammal since quokka in 2011 so I was very pleased. I turned back around when I reached the ski huts and went back down to the road, and then continued on to the top of the pass.

    The blue duck pair which live at the pass are usually in Pegleg Creek which flows into the Otira River. They are a bit hit-and-miss because it just depends on whether they are somewhere visible when you get there. This time I didn’t even need to go all the way to Pegleg Creek. I came over the top of the pass, looked down from the road to the Otira River with my binoculars, and the ducks were sitting on a rock in the middle. There was no easy way to get closer to where they were so I just watched them from where I was until I got too cold. Unusually, at the top of the pass I also came across a group of five grey ducks on a little tarn. I’ve never seen any ducks up there before. It’s pretty hard to find a pure grey duck in New Zealand due to all the hybridisation with mallards, but these looked as pure as they could possibly be. They were all gone when I returned from seeing the blue ducks so I guess they were just having a quick break from flying over the mountains.

    A bit further down I happened across a flock of brown creepers by the roadside – awesome wee birds they are! – and then back in the forest on the Bridal Veil track I briefly spied out a male rifleman. So that was that; apart for rock wren and fernbird (which I heard a couple of times but couldn’t see) I’d seen all the Arthurs Pass birds I was after that day, and I saw some chamois! A good last day of the trip.


    Photos below: crops of chamois and blue ducks (pretty grainy because they were far away)
     

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