Saving birds must be a community effort

TOUGH TIME: With growing summer crowds, the life of the fairy tern gets dangerous. - PHOTO/Sioux Plowman

 

From Jane vaughan, Mangawhai Volunteer 

A little information and education will go a long way to protecting the habitat of our local birdlife.

During the summer, there are a lot of different birds nesting on the Mangawhai sandspit. ase be careful where you walk and watch your feet as eggs and chicks are very well camouflaged. 

Variable oyster catchers – with the long orange beak – may dive bomb you shrieking loudly, red chested northern New Zealand dotterels' may pretend to have a broken wing, and caspian terns, red billed gulls and black backed gulls might shriek and dive bomb you too. This all means that they have a nest or chicks nearby. What you should do is quietly walk away from them and leave them in peace. After all, it is their patch and we are just visitors.

Fairy tern nest sites are fenced off to prevent people from walking on the eggs and chicks so assume there is a nest inside the area so please don't go inside. There are only about 40 of these delightful little birds left in the world and they need all the help that we can provide. 

A fairy tern is as big as a black bird, with distinctive stumpy orange legs, and orange beak in this the breeding season, a black cap and black mask to the eyes, with grey back and white front with a swallow tail you see in flight, makes them very distinctive. 

They hover over the water like a little helicopter and execute a shallow dive to catch tiny fish. The best place to see them fishing is at the pub at very low tide when it just starts to come in again. They feed in the shallow runnels and need to see the fish.

DOC warden Rangi Zimmerman and volunteers are out there every day over the summer, so ask questions and perhaps look through a telescope to get a better view. The chicks are tiny bumble bee sized balls of fluff when they hatch and you will not see them with the naked eye.

The birds worst enemies are predators and this year we have an excellent trapper Reg Whale to help Rangi. In November Rangi caught three rabbits at the northern end of the spit. Reg has caught four cats, 13 rats, seven hedgehogs, and five rabbits at the southern end.

Fairy terns are not wired into these introduced mammalian predators, which use scent to find prey, but are for other large birds like harriers and black backed gulls which use sight to find prey. The feisty fairy terns frequently chase other birds away from eggs and chicks, and the chicks freeze relying on distinctly coloured feathers on their backs to hide them.

Together we can save these birds from extinction, so thank you for your help.