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 sixth blog in the series, Colin describes birds encountered between Auckland and Hamilton.
City to city
Auckland City is big. It took us four days of slack-packing* to progress from Stillwater to Bombay, making good use of public transport along the way (while ensuring that we walked Every Last Inch of the trail).
I chose to use Mangere Bridge to define the section break, meaning that this section started with a birding highlight – the wader roosts of Ambury Farm Park. This was followed by a day of ornithological tedium, counting more than 1,000 house sparrows in a day in the wilds of South Auckland’s light industrial zone.
*A pejorative term used by Te Araroa walkers for those lucky enough to have family and friends strategically placed along the trail, allowing safe storage of Te Araroa gear and one or more days walking with a light pack – bliss.
Things picked up as we walked through Auckland Botanic Gardens and onto the rural landscapes of the Bombay Hills and northern Waikato.
Perhaps anticipating the paucity of interesting birds, many Te Araroa walkers avoid this section altogether, catching a bus to Hamilton and resuming their walk from there. We did not see any other walkers on the trail for the first 5 days of the section – and they call us slackers!
We did get one day of altitudinal relief among the contour-less Waikato floodplain, climbing up over the Hakarimata Range between Huntly and Ngāruawāhia.
It was great to be back among tall trees and away from fast-moving vehicles and slow-moving rivers.
Neither time nor tide
Te Araroa Trail was not designed with birders in mind. One example is the repeated recommendation for walkers to time their arrival at harbours and estuaries at low tide. This is just wrong.
Serious birders know that the time to visit is high tide, when the incoming waters conveniently push previously dispersed throngs of foraging shorebirds onto densely packed high tide roosts, where they can be viewed and counted.
We timed our arrival at Ambury Farm Park (on the shores of Manukau Harbour) to ensure that we were there at high tide.
We also arranged for a local birder to join us with more powerful optics than the compact pair of binoculars that I am carrying on the trail. This can be arranged in advance through the local branch of Birds New Zealand.
After counting the massed flocks of bar-tailed godwits | kuaka (2,500), South Island pied oystercatchers | tōrea (576) and red knots | huahou (300), Bernard and I took turns with his spotting scope, scouring the flocks for rare vagrants.
We soon found loose flocks of ruddy turnstones and New Zealand dotterels | tūturiwhatu defending their nest sites, and witnessed small arriving flocks of wrybill | ngutu pare vanish among the low vegetation.
But what we were really looking for were a single Eurasian whimbrel and two grey-tailed tattlers that had been reported at the site by local birders. We dipped on the whimbrel, but I eventually winkled out one of the tattlers trying to hide among the similarly-sized knots.
Also notable was a nesting colony of more than 250 black-billed gulls | tarāpuka. We will encounter many of these on South Island riverbeds, but there are few colonies in the North Island, and the Ambury colony is one of the northernmost.
The mighty Waikato
The Waikato River is one of New Zealand’s largest, and carves a unique ecosystem through its fertile flood plain. The waterfowl on the river are dominated by large-bodied species: black swans | kakīānau, Canada geese | kuihi, paradise shelducks | pūtangitangi, and mallards | rakiraki.
However, on shallow backwaters near Huntly we saw a few grey teal | tētē-moroiti and also a flock of three brown teal | pāteke (which are rare in the Waikato).
Black shags | māpunga were common along the river – we counted 70 between Mercer and Hamilton. This species occurs throughout Eurasia and Africa, but specialises on freshwater eels (tuna) in Aotearoa, and is most often seen on large rivers. It is a pity they don’t eat more of the invasive koi carp, which are abundant through the Waikato wetlands.
Also notable were the numbers of Caspian terns | taranui we saw along the river. This largest of the tern species is mainly seen around the coast of Aotearoa, but we saw flocks of up to 16 roosting on mudbanks of the Waikato River.
A fancy duck
A highlight of the week was finding our second ‘self-found’ Reportable Species of the trip (the first was the common tern on Ninety Mile Beach). I was binocular-counting a flock of paradise shelducks | pūtangitangi south of Meremere, when I stopped mid-count due to a rarity in their midst.
Chestnut-breasted shelducks are the Australian equivalent (and nearest relative) of our own pūtangitangi. The few that make it across the Tasman Sea usually hang out with their Kiwi cousins, making their identification straightforward.
Birds of the Hakarimata Range
We hoped that the Hakarimata Range would provide an introduction to the more diverse forest bird communities of the central North Island, but were disappointed. It had the same mix of native species (and lack of abundance) as the sadly depleted forests of Northland and North Auckland.
With the exception of one kererū | New Zealand pigeon and a few tomtits | miromiro, the native forest birds along the Hakarimata Forest Track were the same as those in the riparian vegetation of the Waikato River banks.
Bird species added since the previous section
Chestnut-breasted shelduck, New Zealand scaup | pāpango, New Zealand dabchick | weweia, wrybill | ngutu pare, ruddy turnstone, red knot | huahou, grey-tailed tattler, black-billed gull | tarāpuka, little black shag | kawau tūī.
Summary statistics for section five
Cumulative totals for Te Araroa sections completed are given in parentheses.
- Days on the trail = 7 (32)
- Kilometres travelled and surveyed = 181.6 (831.5)
- eBird/Atlas checklists completed = 93 (455)
- Number of bird species = 62 (83)
- Total live birds seen or heard = 15,992 (38,756)
- Most abundant species = house sparrow | tiu (3,278)
- Most abundant native species = bar-tailed godwit | kuaka (2,527)
- Most frequent species = house sparrow | tiu (91.4 % of checklists), followed by common myna | maina (84.9 %), Eurasian blackbird | manu pango (83.9 %), common starling | tāringi (81.7 %), European goldfinch | kōurarini (78.5 %), and chaffinch | pahirini (77.4 %)
- Most frequent native species = silvereye | tauhou (73.1 % of checklists)
- Endemic bird score = 37
Other blogs in this series
- Every Last Bird – the Birds of Te Araroa Trail
- Birds of Te Araroa 1 – Cape Reinga to Kaitāia
- Birds of Te Araroa 2 – Kaitāia to Kerikeri
- Birds of Te Araroa 3 – Kerikeri to Whangārei Harbour
- Birds of Te Araroa 4 – Whangārei Harbour to Auckland
- Birds of Te Araroa 6 – Hamilton to Te Kūiti
- Birds of Te Araroa 7 – Te Kūiti to Taumarunui
- Birds of Te Araroa 8 – Taumarunui to National Park
- Birds of Te Araroa 9 – National Park to Whanganui
- Birds of Te Araroa 10 – Whanganui to Palmerston North
- Birds of Te Araroa 11 – Palmerston North to Wellington
- Birds of Te Araroa 12 – Cook Strait to Havelock
- Birds of Te Araroa 13 – Havelock to St Arnaud
- Birds of Te Araroa 14 – St Arnaud to Boyle Village
- Birds of Te Araroa 15 – Boyle River to Rakaia River
- Birds of Te Araroa 16 – Rakaia River to Twizel
- Birds of Te Araroa 17 – Twizel to Wānaka
- Birds of Te Araroa 18 – Wānaka to the Te Anau Highway
- Birds of Te Araroa 19 – Te Anau Highway to Bluff
- Birds of Te Araroa Trail – Every Last Word
Great adventure
Thanks so much for this ongoing blog. I’ve read every one from far away on the Olympic Peninsula in the USA. I love learning about the birds you’re seeing and the places you’re hiking. It’s a fantastic project!