This trapped ferret is located in a fenced area adjacent to part of the wetland, note the sprayed access to the trap.

The ferret must have liked the smell of the juice from the ‘Sardines in Springwater’. Note the colour of the ferret, mostly white.

Another hedgehog trap used, DO 200 (pic right). Blackbirds use the top of the trap to crack the snail shells on. It is awash of snail ‘juice’, for the want of a better word, and the trap is surrounded by empty snail shells, sometimes this activity sets the trap off.

Only over the past few years has it become widely appreciated that the anti-lead shot/antilead projectile brigade’s ‘scientific evidence’ does either not exist or the evidence is a figment of someone’s imagination – MYTHOLGY; i.e. scientific ‘opinion’ not based on any honest scientific research!

Way back in the 1950s research commenced to prove that wild waterfowl die from ingesting lead shot, but when this research failed to determine this hypothesis another pseudo research programme was created - one that saw huge numbers of captive waterfowl dosed with massive quantities of lead shot; this resulted in a number of birds dying! Hardly surprising as the amount of dosage was hundred times greater than any bird would intake in the wild.

Google – search for: Dosing ducks with lead shot.
In the late 1950s the United Nations latched on to the opportunity to establish a world-wide anti-lead programme, solely aimed at curtailing the growth of shooting sports and at the same time take firearms out of private hands!

In 2012 the UK’s high profile Countryside Alliance financed extensive research on lead in the environment; this determined that 30 commonly eaten foods all contained element of lead – none of which had come from lead shot!

Lead in the environment is a naturally occurring element and no-one appears to have died from eating any of the 30 foods listed in the CA research publication.

Australian scientist John Reid said this about ‘modern scientific research:
“There are issues concerning the way science and scientists are perceived by the public and by themselves. “Why is it assumed that science always gets it right, that only industry is capable of wrecking the environment? “

There are issues about the unholy alliance between environmental scientists on the government payroll and environmental activists and lobby groups acting politically.

“There are issues about the way in which scientists continue to produce those environmental “threats” which have proven so useful in maintaining project funding.”

John Reid has also said:
“It works like this: activists, NZ - Forest & Bird, the Green Party, Dept of Conservation, etc., and overseas, the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, US Fish & Game, etc use science to push for international action on a science-related issue in an area such as health or environment. Then, an international agreement is established, and the science on which it is has been based becomes institutionalised and funded by government. Time and again, when this happens, “the science” stops being science.

“This is because the scientists working on the relevant topic start being advocates and stop being researchers. After all, they are now being paid by the bureaucracy to support a particular doctrine, not to discover new stuff.”

http://blackjay.net/?p=237 (The Subversion of Science).

Recently – from the USA’s Hunt for Truth:
The crux of anti-hunting activists’ argument against traditional ammunition rests on the misplaced assertion that the use of lead ammunition for hunting leads to elevated lead exposure and poisoning in scavenging animals, such as the California condor, that allegedly ingest fragments of spent ammunition in gutpiles or carcasses left by hunters. The scientific studies relied on by the anti-lead proponents are in fact not scientifically sound.

The proponents use “faulty science” to support their antilead ammunition agenda. HuntForTruth.org has procured and analysed over one hundred thousand documents from governmental agencies, universities and researchers and have found systemic flaws, which include faulty methodology and sampling protocols and the selective use of data (i.e. “cherry picking” data for publication).

The anti-lead ammunition proponents have employed psuedo science as a tool to support their distorted agenda. Indeed, the scientific studies used to impose lead ammunition bans are flawed. Researchers who have published these papers have used questionable sampling sizes and have ignored data believed to be contrary to their pre-conceived conclusions regarding lead ammunition. They have also routinely ignored evidence of alternative sources of lead in the environment as a potential cause of lead poisoning or mortality in wildlife. Key studies that profess to link lead ammunition to lead poisoning or mortality in wildlife have been criticised by scientists, and have even been embroiled in lawsuits for withholding original data that show results contrary to their published conclusions.

www.huntfortruth.org/myths/

In March 2015 I detailed the background to this anti-lead shot scenario pointing out that this has played the major role in the demise of the mallard – and possibly the demise of duck shooting in this country.

This was distributed widely – here and overseas – and here it has resulted in NZ Fish & Game admitting that there is a major problem with mallard numbers!

Neil Hayes

WetlandCare Australia’s (WCA) merger with Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA) had immediate benefits for a 20 Million Trees project at Hexham Swamp.

Two of CVA’s Better Earth teams started work in August to plant 8000 trees at Hexham Swamp. The trees will reinstate Coastal Foothills Spotted Gum – Ironbark Forest in open paddocks at Hunter Water’s Shortland Waste Water Treatment Works. The outcome will be a more biodiverse habitat for wildlife, improved carbon storage to mitigate global warming, and a buffer to reduce urban nutrients entering the Swamp.

The Swamp adjoins Hunter Wetlands Centre and flows into the Hunter Estuary Wetlands Ramsar Site. It is listed in the Directory of Important Wetlands of Australia, and is part of the Hunter Estuary Important Bird Area.

WCA Hunter’s Senior Project Officer Tim Mouton said, “Thanks to Paul Davidson and his trusty tractor, the preparation on the site proceeded well and we were ready to start. The site had been slashed, sprayed and deep ripped, so planting was forward.”

Wild cattle were found on site, so a temporary electric fence was installed to make sure the precious plants are not trampled or disturbed. WetlandCare Australia working with Local Land Service’s will have the cattle removed.

WetlandCare Australia has obtained funding through various local government grants to try and locate the vulnerable water mouse, Xeromys myoides. Working with consultant and Sunshine Coast based water mouse researcher, Janina Kaluza UQ, WetlandCare Australia will be out in the mangroves and saltmarsh from Jacobs Well to Beachmere on the hunt for signs of the water mouse.

With support of several organisations, Janina Kaluza has been surveying, monitoring and researching the water mouse in a number of locations throughout the Wide Bay and South East Queensland region since February 2012. This work has expanded and built on previous research in the past 15 to 20 years by scientists within State Government and the broader community. However, gaps remain on information that Janina aims to fill.

The water mouse inhabits coastal areas of central and south east Queensland, Northern Territory and New Guinea, and is typically found in coastal saltmarsh and mangrove areas. A key sign of their presence is their nesting mounds that range from free-standing mounds in saltwater couch grasslands to sheltered mounds in sites such as the base of old grey mangrove trees (Avicennia marina) located within the intertidal zone. The water mouse forages in the mangroves at night, feasting on invertebrates such as crabs, shellfish and snails. Loss, fragmentation and degradation of their habitats are key threats to their survival.

Working with local councils, WetlandCare Australia has been awarded funding to undertake a number of small local projects to survey potential water mice habitat areas. The combined information from these projects will contribute towards completing the jigsaw puzzle on water mice in south east Queensland.

Not much is known about this Australian native rodent, with the data collected being an important step in assisting the implementation of the ‘National Recovery Plan for the water mouse (false water rat) Xeromys myoides’ and the delivery of a coordinated approach to its conservation.

Another project focuses on surveying key habitat areas on Russell Island, one of the Southern Moreton Bay Islands, with funding support from a Redland City Council’s Conservation Grant. The water mouse was recorded on the island in the 1990s. The project aims to determine if the water mouse is still present and identify current threats to its habitat and survival. Surveys undertaken over three days in May this year and the data and survey results are currently being collated.

Funding through the City of Gold Coast’s Community Grants Program, WetlandCare Australia will be focussing water mouse survey effort in the Jacobs Well area in early 2016. Survey work will build on knowledge obtained in the 1990s that recorded the presence of the water mouse in this area. Logan City Council, through their Enviro Grants allows for surveying potential habitat areas on the Logan River in search of the water mouse. Approximately 40ha of mangrove areas will be surveyed in early 2016 to record the presence or absence of nests.

Water mice surveys will also be undertaken in early 2016 over 80ha of mangrove vegetation near the mouth of the Caboolture River with funding through the Moreton Bay Regional Council’s Community Grants Program. This project aims to identify the presence or absence of the water mouse in this area. The water mouse has been recorded previously at nearby Donnybrook.

In February, Havelock North scouts, volunteers and staff spread far and wide, both inside and outside the sanctuary to count patake for the Annual Flock count. Thirtythree dams were visited within the sanctuary and 134 pateke counted (although there were a number of dams and areas such as Rangaiika and Porpoise Gully not visited on the day). Many of the dams we checked are also known to have pateke but birds weren’t seen. If these ‘known’ pateke are optimistically added to the count it makes approximately 180. Also, Chris, the cat contractor has seen pateke a few weeks ago at Rangaiika and I recently counted six in the Porpoise gully stream at night. The lads from Rural Pest Service out shooting rabbits see plenty wandering around at Rangaiika.

Outside the sanctuary, John Winters and I visited around 22 dams not far from the Cape Sanctuary boundary. Pateke were counted on the large Haupouri shooting dam – 12 of them and Andy Lowe saw 18 on both Clifton and Taurapa stations. Three pateke were also spotted on a dam at Elephant Hill by some avid birders who reported them to Sue McLennan while she was taking them on a Kiwi Walk. I was surprised that there were no pateke on the Nilsson’s dams and even Blackie on Te Awanga lagoon didn’t show (he is around seven years old now so maybe has done his dash). Overall though, a good count. It is a snapshot of what’s out there and at the very least around 10 percent of the national population. The exciting developments with the Cape to City project (see http://capetocity.co.nz/about/ and https://www.facebook. com/capetocity) will help provide safer habitat for pateke taking up residence outside Cape Sanctuary.

How many golf courses can boast that they have a critically endangered duck nesting only 10 metres from the Club House entrance? Can you spot the pateke nest behind the log in the centre of the picture? Cape Kidnappers landscaping team recently disturbed a nesting pateke sitting on six eggs, in the golf course drop off/turning area. The area was being replanted. The female had returned by the following morning and appeared oblivious to vehicles coming and going. The eggs all hatched and mum has moved the family off to somewhere a little quieter.

Tamsin Ward Smith

A great number of volunteers were involved in native plantings at Tawharanui Open Sanctuary this last winter season.

Working on quite a steep slope, there were around 92 volunteers with 4000 plants to go in. It took just under three and a half hours to complete.

Afterwards the traditional bbq lunch that follows is really worth waiting for!

In the photos the wider view shows earlier plantings on the right, from the past two years.

The plantings in the brown (hopefully dead) Kikuyu grass on the left have all been done in the four planting days this last season.

All up it adds up to 20,000 plants for the year.

At Tawharanui the policy is to plant out the steep sidings so there are plenty more still to be done!

All seed is sourced from the local bush there and propagated in the Tawharanui Nursery where each week volunteers attend to the seedlings. They do a grand job and really enjoy their potting days - especially the morning teas!

Patte Williams.

Infill planting
Our planting photos often do not have much green in them because we are planting where there has been Kikuyu and it has to be sprayed out first. Infill planting in a wetland that has more colour.

Alison Stanes.

The fallen leaves crunch below our feet as Kimi, my canine sidekick and I approach the top of yet another hill.

It’s autumn and we’re hunting for Australasian bitterns – but not in the thick raupo or out in the shallow waters along wetland edges as you would expect.

No, we’re on farmland - the last place you would think to look for an endangered bird that is rarer than the kokako.

Yet this is where my telemetry gear tells me we need to go. A loud beep pulses out from the little box that hangs from my neck, and I know from the frequency that Prince Tui Teka is close.

It is hard to imagine Prince in this environment. His streaky dark-brown and beige plumage contrasts markedly against this sea of emerald green - so that instead of blending perfectly into the raupo, as he does in his breeding territory at Lake Whatuma, he stands out like a gangly teenager with stage fright - or worse, a possum in the headlights.

We have long suspected that bitterns forage in farmland drains and small spring fed creeks. After all, this is where members of the public report seeing them. Yet bitterns are also easier to spot in these environments, and the habitat is far removed from what the species is reported to like. This is why these sightings have always seemed like fortuitous interactions rather than something of the norm.

The same can be said for bitterns leaving Lake Whatuma. We always thought it was possible, but somewhat unlikely. In the 1980s, a few bitterns carrying transmitters at Whangamarino wetland in the Waikato left their breeding site and were never re-found. Yet other bitterns marked in the same study were known to remain within the area. There are multiple reasons why we might lose the signal of a transmitter carried by a bittern and not all reasons relate to the bird leaving the area. For one, the thick raupo they live in has a high water content, and therefore dampens the radio-signals emitted by our transmitters. So if one has no idea where a bird has gone, and there’s a chance it is in thick raupo, thorough searches of the area are needed to be sure it has left.

So when the signals of all six of my marked bitterns suddenly disappeared in late December, and thorough searches at Lake Whatuma revealed nothing, I have to admit that I was a little surprised. One or two birds leaving the lake was expected, all of them leaving was not. At the same time it was also logical.

The departure of these birds coincided with a dramatic drop in water levels at Lake Whatuma. For most wetland birds this was a god-send – fish and other small prey items become concentrated in the centre of the lake where several wading birds, like pied stilts, congregate to feed in large numbers. But this is not good for bitterns. Of all the species in the heron family, bitterns are known to be the least behaviourally adaptable.They like what they like and that’s it. They’re not one of those gregarious flighty species that can opportunistically flit between people’s gardens, like the silver-eye. And they are not interested in probing around with yappy pied stilts. They’d much rather stalk and stab their food in peace - preferably somewhere that there’s cover and low water levels. If they can’t do that, they leave.

So they left.

Initially it took us a little while to track them down. Kimi and I spent a lot of time out on the top of hills where it’s easier to get a signal.This is because the angle means there’s less vegetation between us and the bird. I met a lot of farmers and landowners during these quests. Some landowners already knew what a bittern was because they’d flushed them from time to time, and others had no idea -but everyone was equally excited to learn that they have the rarest bittern in the world living on their land. I was overwhelmed by the response of these locals and the appreciation they have of their land and their environment.

Yet finding my birds in these areas also troubled me. Sometimes I would find my bitterns foraging happily on gambusia soup or an army of frogs with lots of cover around them. But more often than not I’d find them wandering along a deep drain looking lost and dispirited. There will have been a time when this happened with brown kiwi. When they were still on peoples doorsteps, being seen by locals who loved and adored them. Yet their habitat was still in decline. They were visible not because they were plentiful, but because they couldn’t find what they needed, and were out and about looking for it…and then one day they were gone.

I believe we’re at this unique position with bitterns. The birds are still around but don’t have everything they need for the population to increase. This is a concern because there will be multiple factors driving the decline of bitterns and many of these factors are still poorly understood. The longer a species remains endangered the harder it is to reverse the decline. If you need any more evidence to convince you of this, you only have to look at how intensive (and expensive) the kakapo recovery program is – a species that is currently only one threat classification rarer than bitterns.

The signal emitted from the transmitter carried by Prince Tui Teka gets stronger and suddenly he flies up out of a tiny raupo patch at the edge of a stream. I know that he saw us long before we saw him. As soon as we came over the brow of the hill he will have been tracking us – just as we were tracking him. He will have been standing in the raupo with his beak pointing towards the sky and only his eyes moving as he watched us across the paddock. He will have seen us pause several times to visually scan the raupo patch. The same patch he was hiding in. Who knows he may have seen us look right at him. Yet until this moment we had not spotted him, and even if we had his plumage makes him look exactly like all of the other raupo stems in the same patch.

He has only flushed now because he knows the game is up.Thanks to the transmitter he carries his camouflage no longer prevents us from re-finding him. I watch him land further down the stream before placing my boot in the water where he was previously standing – the stream is shallow and several small fish and amphibians dart away from me and disappear into the aquatic vegetation. This is one of the better places I’ve found him. There is some cover for him so that he can hide while he forages and the water is clear and shallow enough for him to see his prey. I leave him in peace and head off to find the landowner and congratulate them on this discovery. It’s not all boom and gloom – this landowner likes bitterns and has already said he will not remove any of the habitat Prince uses. 

I still suspect Prince doesn’t have everything he needs but at least this site is better than the empty drain he was wandering along last week.Upon returning to my van on the top of the hill I have a quick listen for the bittern Tama Tomoana with my tracking gear. Members of the local hapu named this bittern after one of the grandsons of Henare Tomoana, a prominent Maori leader in the Hawke’s Bay region in the late 1800s. 

Tama’s father, Paraire Tomoana, composed a number of well known waiata including ‘Po Karekare Ana’. Tama himself was renowned for his rich baritone booming voice – just like our Tama. (And the leadership and musical genes were passed on to Tama’s son, Ngahiwi, who currently chairs Ngati Kahungunu Iwi Inc.). Yet it’s been a while since we’ve heard anything from Tama the bird.

Tama has been missing for seven months now. During the breeding season he was one of our most site-loyal birds and he was regularly found booming within a small area of less than 2 hectares in size - basically one small raupo patch. This was in contrast to some of the other bitterns, like Barry White, who boomed from lots of locations within a 15 hectare area.

This previous site-loyalty left us extra surprised when Tama disappeared and then could not be found. By now all of the other bitterns were accounted for – even Bing Crosby, who had originally flummoxed us last year by disappearing mid-way through the bittern breeding season. In late January we happily rediscovered Bing at Wanstead swamp, a site that’s about 15 kms from his breeding site. Of all of our wandering bittern, Bing was found the farthest from home. We looked for Tama in all of these areas too and nothing was heard.

Colleagues in Australia had recently attached a satellite transmitter to a juvenile male bittern and found that this bird moved farther than 550 kms after breeding had finished, crossing two state borders. Clearly our bitterns could physically move long distances if they want to - this got us thinking that perhaps Tama has done something similar? Five months after he went missing we decided we needed to broaden our search, so we put out a national plea asking anyone with access to telemetry gear to check their wetlands and listen for his signal. People looked for him at wetlands across the country - from Northland down to Waituna lagoon in Southland. His signal was still not found.

In June, all five of our autumn wanderers came back to Lake Whatuma. We waited with baited breath to see if Tama would also return - but his signal remained silent. By July 28, local landowner Max Lyver reported hearing the first bittern boom on the lake. The breeding season had begun, but still Tama was missing. We’d given up hope. Then on August 12, eight months after he’d left the lake, and over one month later than all the other marked male bitterns, Tama’s signal was once again heard beeping from his usual breeding territory. He was back and booming again. Where he went we will never know. He clearly still has a story to tell. This year we hope to recapture him so that we can replace his radio transmitter with a satellite transmitter - kindly donated by Ducks Unlimited, NZ. This will allow us to track him regardless of where he goes, meaning we will be able to get a complete story of his autumn adventures next year.

To me, Tama’s return to Lake Whatuma highlights just how much we’ve learned about the habits and behaviours of these birds over the 12 months they have been carrying transmitters – and yet how many mysteries still remain.

Without Ducks Unlimited, NZ’s continued financial support of this project we would not have been able to unlock these bittern secrets. Knowledge gained by this project is being used to help inform bittern conservation projects nationally.

Emma Williams