Today's bird, on Lake Te Puna a te Ora: Kuruwhengi | Australasian shoveler. 🐦
New Zealand status: Native; Conservation status: Not Threatened
Shovelers are specialist filter-feeding waterfowl with a large spoon-shaped or shovel-shaped bill that is almost twice as broad at its tip than at its base
The Girl Who Found Joy (The Shee McQueen Mystery Thriller Series Book 6) by Amy Vansant.
A somewhat complicated plot. Since the reader has more info than the detectives do, I suspected the outcome by maybe 2/3 through. Still a very engaging read. 📚
Some of my Micro.Blog pals might be interested in reading this Waikawa News blog post: Who are all those birds in the Estuary? 🐦
See photos of the 21 birds that commonly use our estuary — excludes common
birds like ducks, magpies etc.
Sample bird:
Jana DeLeon has created another engaging and fun story in the Miss Fortune series with Swamp Spies. 📚
This book opens with an undercover spy mission to rescue Carter before yet another Sinful resident turns up dead in suspicious circumstances.
Fortune, Gertie and Ida Belle sort things out.
I very much enjoyed watching The Marvels. It was fun.
We have a 20,000 litre rainwater tank that serves our house for drinking and other water. Since it was last filled by tanker at the start of November 2023 we've had only about 175 mm rain (6.9") adding ~11,000 litres. That's just not enough, so today the tanker delivered another 12,000 litres.
For those who just want the pretty pictures — 🐦
A juvenile Tarapirohe | Black-fronted Tern.
New Zealand status: Endemic
Conservation status: Nationally Endangered
Length: 28 cm; Weight: 95 g;
More at Juvenile Black-fronted Tern.
Juvenile Black-fronted Tern
At this time of year we see flocks of White-fronted Terns hanging out in the estuary near the sea, but on 22 February 2024 this bird was sitting apart from the flock. Looking closer, it was a bit different, but has been confirmed as a juvenile Tarapirohe | Black-fronted Tern. That's a new addition to the Waikawa Beach Big List of Birds. 🐦
New Zealand status: Endemic
Conservation status: Nationally Endangered
Length: 28 cm; Weight: 95 g;
A medium-small blue-grey tern with a forked tail, short orange legs and bright orange pointed decurved bill. Breeding adults have pale blue-grey body plumage contrasting with a black cap and narrow white cheek stripe; non-breeding adults have a mottled grey cap, a black patch around the eye and ear coverts, and a black-tipped bill.
It's so encouraging this summer to see the estuary full of birds from the land to the sea and north and south of the river. There's a very young new Oystercatcher chick running round too, bringing the total of Pied Stilt and Oystercatcher chicks that have survived to 6.
I'm certain that one reason the birds have been so abundant this summer is that the easy access for vehicles to the beach has been blocked off. People have still been sometimes illegally accessing the beach through a track from one nearby property, through council land and destroying several metres of recently planted spinifex.
Some locals also carved a vehicle track through a pedestrian-only Reserve, even using a chainsaw to cut down a post that was in their way. Council ended up installing three signs warning vehicles off, but these vehicle-addled locals just laugh as they drive through anyway. Witnesses have reported some to the Police and to the Council.
The overall effect of the official entrance being closed though has been to very much reduce disturbance of the wildlife by vehicles.
Tarāpuka | Black-billed gull 🐦 :
The black-billed gull is found only in New Zealand … The black-billed gull is more slender than the red-billed gull, with a longer bill. Breeding adults have a white head, neck, rump, tail and underparts, and pale silver-grey wings and back.
West coast waves — at Waikawa Beach in Horowhenua in Aotearoa.
My friend Rachel has a thing or two to say about ageing and being old — A taxonomy of aging based on the elder tree:
the “old” are forever the Other, older than us, not like us. Until they are like us. And we are them. …
a mature tree (our 50s and 60s); an elderflower (our 70s and 80s); an elderberry (our 90s and more)
6 am and look at that: Venus side by side with Mars in the morning sky. ✨✨
Juvenile Tarapunga | Red-billed gull, a native whose conservation status is Declining. 🐦
It's a ground misty kind of morning. With Venus and sunrise.
Another in a gripping series — Dead Stop (Sydney Rose Parnell Book 2) by Barbara Nickless 📚:
With Denver beset by a series of monsoonlike thunderstorms that threaten to flood the city, Sydney and her K9 partner, Clyde, must wade through a murky trail of murder that stretches back thirty years—all to rescue a child
Spotted this roughly 5 cm grasshopper on the outside of my bedroom window this morning.
First time for everything: this Blokart had come up from Ōtaki. I haven't seen one on Waikawa Beach before.
Cyclone categories no longer fit for a heating planet:
Increasingly strong cyclones may mean a new higher-wind-speed category needs to be created, researchers say, as global heating ups the forces at play. …
climate change is turbo-charging cyclones to the point some forecasters and climate researchers say Category 5 is no longer severe enough.…
US researchers found five storms since 1980 would have qualified for the new category, with all five occurring since 2013.
The swallows love hanging out on the railing by our east window, in the early evening sun. 🐦
Such a good read I've preordered the next in series — Redemption (Eva "Lightning Dance" Duran Book 1) by Deborah J Ledford 📚 :
a Native American sheriff’s deputy risks it all to find a friend who’s gone missing.
Set around the Taos Pueblo reservation, it incorporates interesting elements of spirituality.
