Having reached Dunedin the previous night, I still had a long drive ahead of me to get to the areas I wanted to today. As such, I left Dunedin quite early, at around 07:30 and began the long drive north. The road, the number one highway, is a single lane for the most part and it only passes through flat, dry agricultural land with very little going on and almost no native vegetation. It truly was a bleak landscape.
At midday I finally reached my first destination, a bird
hide on the south side of Lake Ellesmere known as Hart’s Creek. It was quite
amazing to find that the bird hide had apparently been removed, leaving just a
small platform that only barely peeked over the reedbed into the lake beyond.
Still, I spent an hour birding here and had a few nice bits, including another
Sacred Kingfisher, a flyover Spoonbill and some very confiding New Zealand
Fantails. I tried playback for some crake species, and heard two calls from
Spotless Crake, but alas I could not see the bird.
Just a little up the road, on the north side of Lake
Ellesmere 20 minutes away, was a good spot to try to find Wrybill, my last main
target species for my itinerary here. It was still early afternoon so decided
to try explore. It took a short while to work out the area, but walking down to
the shoreline I spotted a group of 52 roosting Wrybill in the vegetation. Having
missed out on them at Lake Pukaki and the Tawai Estuary, this was a huge relief.
By crawling, I was able to get very close to the birds and
was very happy with my encounter. They did not flush at all, preferring to comically
hop away on just one leg. Sometimes though they would just sit and carry on
preening. It was extremely windy so presumably, they didn't want to move around
too much. In the middle of the flock I also had a very nice summer plumaged
Red-necked Stint, which was not nearly as confiding and quickly ran off into
the short grass when I tried to approach.
Wrapped up just before 15:00, I set off from Lake Ellesmere north, with three more hours driving ahead of me to reach the coastal town of Kaikoura. This destination is extremely popular with tourists trying to see Whales and Dolphins, as well as seabirds, so it promises to be an exciting couple of days. Although I arrived at 18:00, I was exhausted and rain quickly followed my arrival. Consequently, I ate some dinner then headed straight to the tent.
Harts Creek: Canada Goose, Mute Swan, Black Swan, Paradise Shelduck, Australasian Shoveler, Mallard, New Zealand Scaup, Australasian Swamphen, Pied Stilt, Kelp Gull, Little Pied Cormorant, Royal Spoonbill, Swamp Harrier, Sacred Kingfisher, Grey Gerygone, Australian Magpie, New Zealand Fantail, Welcome Swallow, Song Thrush, Common Blackbird, Dunnock, Eurasian Chaffinch, Lesser Redpoll, European Goldfinch,
Embankment Road: Black Swan, Grey Teal, Pied Stilt, South Island Oystercatcher, Double-banded Plover, Wrybill, Red-necked Stint, Kelp Gull, Royal Spoonbill, Australian Magpie, Eurasian Skylark, Welcome Swallow, Common Starling, Yellowhammer,
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