Between November 2023 and March 2024, Natural History curator Colin Miskelly is walking the length of Aotearoa New Zealand on Te Araroa Trail – counting every bird seen or heard along the way. In this fifth blog in the series, Colin describes birds encountered between Marsden Point and Onehunga.
East Coast Bays
After crossing Whangārei Harbour entrance, Te Araroa largely follows the east coast down to Auckland, with a few diversions inland along forested trails and across farmland.
This starts with the long sandy beaches of Ruakaka, Waipu, Mangawhai, and Pakiri, and on to the densely populated beaches of Auckland’s North Shore. Even as we approached Auckland, we found that you didn’t need to venture far from a road end to have the coast to ourselves.
After stepping off the Devonport ferry, Te Araroa follows Auckland’s Coast to Coast Trail, linking the Waitematā and Manukau Harbours.
It’s not all just a walk in the park
Te Araroa Trail requires numerous water crossing – most on foot (the Okura Estuary was chest deep even at low tide), but many involving vessels ranging in size from kayaks to Cook Strait ferries.
We started this section by crossing Whangārei Harbour entrance on a private boat. As we reached Ruakaka near high tide later that day, we arranged to cross the estuary there with local ferryman Simon Ellison.
Skewing the statistics
Marsden Point, at the southern entrance to Whangārei Harbour, has one of the largest red-billed gull | tarāpunga breeding colonies in the country. Nesting behind the security fence of the former oil refinery (and therefore away from people and dogs), I made a hurried estimate of 2,500 adults and chicks before continuing south to Ruakaka.
This was the largest bird aggregation so far encountered on the trail, and was the main reason why red-billed gulls comprised more than 27% of the birds counted on this section of the trail.
Coastal birds of North Auckland
Variable oystercatchers | tōrea pango and New Zealand dotterels | tūturiwhatu are among the most characteristic birds of the east coast north of Auckland. Both have responded well to predator control and having their nests protected from human disturbance (by use of temporary fencing). I counted 70 New Zealand dotterels and 393 variable oystercatchers on this section, with the tūturiwhatu in particular becoming notably absent once we encountered beaches filled with people and dogs.
Variable oystercatchers are familiar coastal birds throughout the country. As their name suggests, not all birds look the same. In the south, nearly all birds are entirely black, but north of Auckland, up to a quarter of the birds are of the pied morph (black-and-white, though never with as much white as their smaller South Island pied oystercatcher | tōrea cousins).
The variable oystercatcher has the unlikely scientific name of Haematopus unicolor. This is because Johann Forster (a naturalist on Cook’s second voyage) described the species based on an all-black bird from Dusky Sound, Fiordland. It took more than a century for naturalists to conclude that the pied birds in the north were the same species, but the strict priority rules of scientific nomenclature meant the ‘unicolor’ moniker must be used for them all.
New Zealand’s rarest endemic bird
This section of Te Araroa Trail includes the breeding grounds for almost the entire breeding population of fairy terns | tara iti. With fewer than nine breeding pairs known, we were fortunate to see more than 10% of the entire population.
Tara iti are tiny – at around 70 g, they are about 40% of the size of their familiar white-fronted tern | tara cousins. We saw two birds fishing near our camping ground beside Mangawhai Harbour, and a pair fishing in the stream by Pakiri camping ground. This pair courtship-fed then mated on an exposed sandflat – hopefully an omen for a good breeding season.
Unwanted Legasea
The long oceanic beaches of the North Auckland east coast provided another opportunity for beach patrolling – searching for beachcast seabirds (see earlier blog Cape Reinga to Kaitaia). One of the reasons that Birds New Zealand runs the beach patrol scheme is to provide information on the causes of death for New Zealand seabirds – and in this case the information was grim.
We found 33 dead seabirds of 12 species between Ocean Beach (near Whangārei Heads) and Pakiri. Additional species compared to Ninety Mile Beach included two Cook’s petrels | tītī, a northern giant petrel | pāngurunguru, and a black shag | māpunga. The most unexpected find was a freshly dead Hutton’s shearwater | Kaikōura tītī – a species rarely found on northern east coast beaches.
The most abundant species we found was flesh-footed shearwater | toanui – with three of the eight birds found showing evidence of having been deliberately (and illegally) killed by recreational fishers. This protected species is well-known for persistently diving after bait on fishing hooks when they are cast over the side of a boat. Few fishers distinguish the various petrel species, calling them all ‘muttonbirds’ and often treating them with callous contempt.
One of the birds we found had a shattered humerus – an injury typical of being whacked with a gaff or boat hook. Two others were tightly tangled in recreational fishing trace that had been cut close to the birds – indicating that they were likely brought on board alive and callously hiffed over the side to drown together.
Unfortunately, deliberate killing by recreational fishers is only one of a long list of threats faced by toanui, with others including fisheries by-catch, competition with commercial fisheries, changes in oceanic productivity associated with global climate change, light pollution, oil pollution (e.g. M.V. Rena), and predation by introduced mammals at breeding colonies.
A rare – but not unexpected – visitor
In addition to the tara iti, we were privileged to watch a little egret near Mangawhai camp site. About half the size of the better-known kōtuku, there are usually only a couple of these Australian visitors in New Zealand in a given year – with Mangawhai one of the places they are reported most regularly.
There is currently an influx of up to 15 little egrets in New Zealand, following recent flood events in eastern Australia. The floods were newsworthy due to their impacts on human lives and infrastructure, but were ecologically significant as they created ideal conditions for many wetland bird species to breed prolifically. When the floods recede, the birds disperse – and some make it all the way across the Tasman Sea.
Central Birding District
After crossing Waitematā Harbour via the Devonport ferry, Te Araroa touches on the Auckland central business district before heading towards Auckland Domain. Unsurprisingly, the first bird species encountered there were feral pigeons | kererū aropai and house sparrows | tiu, and I was interested in how far we would have to travel to find some endemic birds.
We had only walked a couple of hundred metres before seeing two tūī squabbling over pōhutukawa blossoms, which proved to be the only endemic bird species in the first 2 km transect from the waterfront (5 tūī recorded).
Pelagic postscript
Most southbound Te Araroa walkers start their hikoi in October or November, to ensure they reach the South Island during summer low river flows (there are numerous river crossings in the South Island backcountry).
My start date was very precise, as I was booked on a pelagic seabirding trip out of Tutukaka on 18 November, and I estimated it would take 15 days to walk to nearby Ngunguru from Cape Reinga. You can imagine my dismay when the trip organiser contacted me a few days before our scheduled trip to inform me that the trip was cancelled as the boat was out of the water for repairs.
I decided to use my next scheduled rest day in Auckland to drive back up to Tutukaka to join Scott Brooks and 8 others on the next available trip. Scott organises regular trips out to The Petrel Station to view a fantastic diversity of seabirds.
We saw an estimated 22,500 seabirds of 28 species, including the following species not so far seen on Te Araroa Trail: northern royal albatross, New Zealand wandering albatross (Gibson’s subspecies), Salvin’s mollymawk, white-capped mollymawk, white-faced storm petrel, New Zealand storm petrel, northern giant petrel, grey-faced petrel, Cook’s petrel, Pycroft’s petrel, fairy prion, black petrel, sooty shearwater, short-tailed shearwater, little shearwater, common diving petrel, little black shag, and grey noddy.
Bird species added since the previous section
Canada goose | kuihi, fairy tern | tara iti, little egret
Summary statistics for section four
Cumulative totals for Te Araroa sections completed are given in parentheses.
- Days on the trail = 8 (25)
- Kilometres travelled and surveyed = 223.7 (649.9)
- eBird/Atlas checklists completed = 130 (359)
- Number of bird species = 55 (75)
- Total live birds seen or heard = 10,808 (22,764)
- Most abundant species = red-billed gull | tarāpunga (2,962)
- Most frequent species = Eurasian blackbird | manu pango (77.7 % of checklists)
- Most frequent native species = tūī (64.6 % of checklists)
- Endemic bird score = 28
Other blogs in this series
- Birds of Te Araroa 19 – Te Anau Highway to Bluff
- Birds of Te Araroa 18 – Wānaka to the Te Anau Highway
- Birds of Te Araroa 17 – Twizel to Wānaka
- Birds of Te Araroa 16 – Rakaia River to Twizel
- Birds of Te Araroa 15 – Boyle River to Rakaia River
- Birds of Te Araroa 14 – St Arnaud to Boyle Village
- Birds of Te Araroa 13 – Havelock to St Arnaud
- Birds of Te Araroa 12 – Cook Strait to Havelock
- Birds of Te Araroa 11 – Palmerston North to Wellington
- Birds of Te Araroa 10 – Whanganui to Palmerston North
- Birds of Te Araroa 9 – National Park to Whanganui
- Birds of Te Araroa 8 – Taumarunui to National Park
- Birds of Te Araroa 7 – Te Kūiti to Taumarunui
- Birds of Te Araroa 6 – Hamilton to Te Kūiti
- Birds of Te Araroa 5 – Auckland to Hamilton
- Birds of Te Araroa 3 – Kerikeri to Whangārei Harbour
- Birds of Te Araroa 2 – Kaitāia to Kerikeri
- Birds of Te Araroa 1 – Cape Reinga to Kaitāia
- Every Last Bird – the Birds of Te Araroa Trail
Would love to follow this effort