Wetlands
Pateke in Autumn
Autumn has come to Pateke Lagoons. Overnight temperatures have dropped and heavy dew greets the morning. The cooler weather means ceasefire in the endless war against the blackberry as it stops growing in late March. We have had a good battle this year with some areas cleaned up entirely. Now is the time to map out which blocks will get 'the treatment' in the spring.
The lagoons are alive with ducks as it has been an excellent breeding season. Fledging is completed and the sky is full of ducks wheeling around doing their circuits and landings. The mallard drakes spend their days giving out their maniacal laugh and chasing each other around. Mallards and grey ducks are now flocking in large numbers with flights of several hundred at a time in the air. It has also been a good season for grey teal with numbers up considerably on last year. It would be nice to claim that the nesting boxes we erected have caused the population increase in grey teal, but they have completely ignored the new dwellings preferring their own hideaways.
One pair of black swans have taken up residence. They too have fledged and spend quite a bit of time in the air, which makes a great sight.
The pair of royal spoonbills have now flown off, probably to Manawatu Estuary, after a late summer seiving for tadpoles in one of the shallower ponds.
The dabchicks have not fared so well this season with only one chick being successfully reared that we can see, out of the four pairs that we wthink we have. Being a pretty secretive bird they are often difficult to find. However the pair in front of the house have also fledged and are having a great time flying small distances across the main pond. It has been such a wet spring and summer that the water levels are much higher than usual. This may have affected the breeding of the dabbies as they lay their eggs very close to the water. Normal nesting areas may well be under water still with levels being about one metre over normal for this time of year.
We have seen very few canada geese goslings this year, and the resident population is very low. In fact the canada geese seem to have gone elsewhere, which has been a blessing as they are noisy raucous birds in large numbers. A year ago we were home to at least two hundred. This year we have a few that fly in for short periods, usually at night, but they take off again in the early morning. We had planned to have a major cull this winter but that hopefully that will not now be necessary.
On the land we have now cleaned up most of the tree falls from the storms of late February, with firewood sufficient for many years now cut and stacked to dry for ourselves and our neighbors.