World Trip Reports
Airport lay-over in Auckland, New Zealand
Making your own luck
4 spare hours at Auckland Airport, New Zealand
0800 – 1200, Saturday 18th March, 2007
At the end of a ten day visit to New Zealand I had a four hour wait between arriving at Auckland from the Bay of Islands and my return flight to Hong Kong.
The trip had been a good one for birds and included my first, and long-awaited, pelagic during which I saw the “back from the dead” New Zealand Storm Petrel, which was rediscovered in the Hauraki Gulf after going missing for more than 100 years, and a range of other seabirds including Blue Penguin, Blue-grey Noddy, Fairy Prion, Black Petrel,White-faced Storm Petrel, Arctic Skuas hassling terns to disgorge their food, and a major NZ rarity – White-necked Petrel. I had also enjoyed some of the native NZ land birds on the refuge island of Tiritiri Matangi, and picked up a few other goodies including Fairy Tern, New Zealand Dotterel and the splendid New Zealand Pigeon gorging on berries in the garden of my friends Lawrence and Judith.
During the trip I had however missed the opportunity to go down to the famous shorebird site at Miranda to look for perhaps the most bizarre wader on the planet – Wrybill. Every single individual of this medium-sized plover (which is endemic to New Zealand), has a bill which curves to the right at the tip! This throws up major questions even for the dullest of non-birders:
- Why to the right?
- Why not left?
- Do any hang left?
- Should a Wrybill that hangs left be called a Wrongbill?
- Can we make a cute-cute Disney movie about "Wally the wrong-way Wrybill"?
- Could I say that with a few beers inside me?
- Can I say say it sober?
- What on Earth am I blathering about?
I had considered finding a way to get to Miranda (about an hour’s drive away) and back in time for my flight, but reluctantly abandoned the idea as impractical and too expensive (taxi prices in NZ are scary!) I did learn that Miranda is not the only place near Auckland they occur. I'd heard vaguely about Mangere Sewage Farm, which is about 5km from the airport, but had no idea about access or even if it was the right time of year for Wrybills.
I was still undecided after arriving at Auckland, but went off to find a bookshop to see if I could find the sewage farm in a guide-book. I couldn’t, but struck gold in an AA road atlas of the Auckland area, along with a helpful note saying: “Bird hide” Bar-tailed Godwit, Wrybill, Lesser Knot , . .” That was enough to go on, so I put my bag in left-luggage, found a friendly lady cab driver that knew vaguely where to go and set off for Puketutu Island, which was in the right area and better-known than the sewage works (which I have since discovered is now closed!).
I got dropped off at the beginning of the causeway to Puketutu Island in a pretty strong wind, with no mudflats visible and no sign of any waders whatsoever. Hmmm. After staring along the rocky and birdless causeway and hopefully out across the water my eyes lit upon a large white blob sticking out of the blustery sea. It was too far away to see if there were any birds on it, but it did seem a likely high tide roost. It also looked possible to get there by walking along the breakwater next to the sewage farm fence. Then I found the breakwater not only had a real path, but also an interpretation panel, which showed a map of the area and a couple of bird hides marked on it!
This presented a dilemma – the north hide or the south? Both were equally far away “35 minutes” according to the map, and I would probably not have the chance to get to both. In the end I decided to follow the map book and headed north, to where I could just about make out some sort of structure that might just be a hide.
With time ticking away I decided to push myself – march 200 steps and then run 200 steps. This worked well until I found myself alongside a large lagoon which had a group of several hundred Black-winged Stilts (or Pied Silt as the local race leucocephalus are known), a couple of White-fronted Terns and a couple of rafts of duck, which I could not make out against the light, although one took off showing the familiar blue forewings of a shoveler. I headed towards the stilts, reasoning that if they were roosting there, then perhaps a few Wrybills might do the same. . . and off I marched again . . . away from the bird hide marked on the map. . .
Before I had gone too far I noticed the stilts were actually flying in the opposite direction and realised that the tide was rising in the lagoon and that they were retreating to another high tide roost on the edge of the bay. So I turned round and headed back towards them – again thinking that I would find Wrybills in the same spot. I was wrong - again - but did see fifty or so of the wonderful Paradise Shelduck and the roosting flock of several hundred Pied Stilts, each with a smart black nape. They were a truly impressive sight, especially when the whole lot took off and circled overhead in perfect formation.
Nice, but not what I had come for, so I pushed on towards the white blobs in the sea. As I got closer I noticed that they were made of piles of sun-bleached seashells. Much more exciting than seashells was a group of 27 winter-plumaged Royal Spoonbills. They are very similar to Black-faced Spoonbill in Knw well from Hong Kong, and I was glad not to need to separate them - Black-faced has never been recorded down here. There were also a few snoozing Southern Black-backed and Red-billed Gulls . . . but still no Wrybills!
I headed on towards the second of the seashell banks, and when I finally got there I hunkered down behind a rock out of the wind – the hide was 20 metres . . . and 20 minutes away round the other side of a tidal creek that was too big to jump across, and agonisingly, only just - and immediately picked out a huge group of small grey waders roosting about 70 metres away – over 1000 Wrybills! - all packed together on an area the size as a tennis court!
I watched them for about 15 minutes, catching vestiges of the slim black breast band against the white underparts and smooth pearl-grey upperparts. While there was no doubt they were Wrybills I struggled hard to convince myself that the bill did indeed turn to the right. Almost all of the birds were facing away from me, and when a couple of birds did turn round and come a little closer, I was able to confirm that the bill did not turn left, but due to the strong wind and lack of a telescope I struggled to make out the barest hint of a right turn. I would have given a lot to get 20 metres, or even 10 metres closer, but it would have been impossible and I had to be content, especially as time ticked relentlessly away.
In fact I was more than content – I was jubilant! Nailing down such a good bird by taking a chance on the barest of information - and against the clock, making one speculative decision after another that turned out to be right, and getting a major break from the perfectly-timd high tide, I had finally seen a wonderful flock of a bird that has been high on my “most wanted list for a very long time!
On my way back past the lagoon I was able to confirm that the duck were half-a-dozen eclipse Australasian Shovelers and about 120 of the appropriately named Grey Duck – two more new species – to give me a total of 51 new birds for the entire 10 day trip. Nice, yes, but not a patch on those Wrybills!
Buy a copy of, "The Future Eaters" by Australian mammologist Tim Flannery. Skip ahead to the bit about New Zealand. Keep working on Time Machine.
We were lucky enough to drop on a flock of well over 150 wrybills at another site close to the airport.We saw them from the rudimentary hide which overlooks the high tide roost (on a shell island) at Ambury Regional Park on Manukau Harbour .This was late last October and we were delighted to also see a pair of New Zealand Dotterel at the same spot (along with many other waders).A couple of chicks indicated breeding of this species at or close to the site.