Muttonbirds at Mason Bay

Mason Bay on the west coast of  Stewart Island is the starting point for our Stewart Island Track guided walk and it appears from a recent count of dead muttonbirds that all is not well in Mutton bird land ....  a recent survey indicates that warm ocean currents ( apparently they come from the Gold Coast of Australia ) may have moved the whole muttonbird eco system southward ....

The Southland Times reports ...

Thousands of young muttonbirds have starved to death on Stewart Island and the Titi Islands this season because parental birds have abandoned their chicks in search of food. 

Experts say warmer ocean temperatures have pushed small fish that the birds eat such as krill, squid and sardines into deeper and colder waters where they thrive. The muttonbirds have followed them to those colder waters. 

Invercargill naturalist Lloyd Esler did an annual count of muttonbirds on Mason Bay, Stewart Island, at the weekend, which revealed the most dead muttonbirds he had seen in about 15 years.
Almost 2000 dead birds were found washed up on the shore compared with about 100 in previous years, he said. 

There was a "glitch" in the food supply and it could be because warm currents moved small fish into water too deep for the birds to catch, Mr Esler said. 

Read the full article here......

Predator free plan for Stewart Island

Predator free plan for Stewart Island?

We love the idea .... Gareth Morgan on his blog listed these benefits for Stewart Island:

• Significant economic gains from tourist visitation
• Social benefits for the community of Oban 
• An enhancement of New Zealand’s reputation for pristine environments
• A substantial ecological dividend from enhancing the natural capital of Stewart Island

 You can download the full report "Eliminating Predators from Stewart island here

http://garethsworld.com/blog/enviroment/predator-free-stewart-island-update/

and Kerry McBride from the Southland Times reports...

Gareth Morgan has announced details of a multimillion-dollar conservation plan - to rid Stewart Island of pests.

The plan, which he estimates could cost between $40 million and $50m, aims to create the world's first predator-free island with a substantial human population.

The price of creating such a global "hothouse" would be that all cats would have to be confined, and could even be shipped off the island entirely during the "elimination" phase.

The project would start by creating about 5000 hectares of pest-free land from Halfmoon Bay to the Rakiura Track, to be protected by a 12-kilometre predator-proof fence. Stage two of the project would then concentrate on the rest of the 170,000ha island.

Its focus would be on eradicating rats, possums and feral cats, but the proposal report notes that there is some risk of pet cats being killed during the operation.

"This may damage any public support for the project," the report says.

"Mitigation measures need to be investigated and tested with the community for acceptance. Measures could include keeping the animals indoors during the operation . . . or holding the cats off the island for the full duration of the elimination project."

Dr Morgan said yesterday that pets would have to be managed, rather than killed.

"The whole thing with pets is you just have to confine them."

Islanders had slowly embraced the project, going from a "none of us like change sort of thing", to wanting to be involved, he said. "They've never been anti; they love the end point."

And as for that end point, "My vision is to have kiwi wandering down the main street of Oban."

He said it was a "massive" project, both technically challenging and made harder by the fact there was a community of people to consider.

Read the full story here ....

Why can't Kiwis fly?

Here is an extract from a NZ Herald Article

Simple: they don't have to - or at least they didn't until humans brought dangerous predators such as dogs, stoats, ferrets, possums and cats to New Zealand. Before then native birds such as weka, the New Zealand falcon/k?rearea, the extinct laughing owl, giant eagle and adzebill killed kiwis, but the national bird had developed defences to deal with these hazards. Chiefly, it had become nocturnal, thus avoiding most enemies except perhaps the laughing owl, which was a skilled night-time hunter.

A further reason why kiwis haven't had to fly is that they are masters of disguise. Maori recognised this, naming the kiwi 'te manu huna a Tane' (the hidden bird of Tane). Its mottled plumage, blending perfectly with the forest understorey, provides an ideal
defence against predatory birds that hunt by sight. And it was (and still is) adept at camouflaging its nest before leaving on a nightly foraging expedition. Unfortunately the kiwi's characteristic scent is an easy giveaway to introduced mammals, which use their sense of smell to hunt.

Did kiwis ever fly? We don't know. Like most ratites (the bird group to which the kiwi belongs), the kiwi lacks the flat sternum to which flight muscles attach; all that remain are tiny vestigial wings.

Not for nothing was the kiwi dubbed Apteryx, meaning 'wingless'.

But not all modern ratites are flightless, so it is possible that the kiwi used to fly. Scientists envisage three possibilities: that the kiwi was already here when New Zealand broke away from Gondwanaland 83 million years ago and may or may not have been already flightless; that at some point during the last 50 million years a flightless kiwi walked to New Zealand, making its way across islands that rose and fell, from New Caledonia down through Norfolk Island and on to the Northland peninsula; or thirdly, that there was a flying kiwi ancestor which dropped in on New Zealand from Australia in relatively recent times.

Fossil evidence doesn't give any answers. The oldest known kiwi fossil is a femur bone found near Marton in what were once sand dunes, but this fossil is much too young to throw light on the kiwi's origins. DNA evidence is probably the best hope to answer the question of kiwi flight, but at present it is inconclusive.

Read more about some quirky Kiwi questions here ....