It has been noticed that recently I have been a bit tardy with additions of new images. One of the things that has diverted some time from image processing has been the New Zealand storm-petrel project. These little sea birds had been considered extinct for more than 150 years but were rediscovered in 2003. Now that we know where and what to look for, they are regularly seen on pelagic bird watching trips in the Hauraki Gulf (off the north east coast of the North Island), however relatively little is known about them. One major concern is that no one knows where they breed, and this raises fears that mammalian predators or other events could have catastrophic impacts on what is almost certainly a perilously small population. Accordingly, finding the breeding site has been the focus of recent NZSP research.
In October I joined a team for a week-long trip to try to capture NZ stormies at sea so that radio transmitters could be fitted, and hopefully lead to where they breed. I have carried out radio-tagging work on other birds so this was a great opportunity to volunteer my time to an important and exciting conservation project, with opportunities to photograph pelagic birds a significant bonus. Since their rediscovery, only 7 NZSP had been captured (amazingly the first one actually flew onto a boat at night and landed on skipper Geordie Murman’s shirt!), and by the end of the October attempt that total remained unchanged. However, I came home with over 100 GB of images to deal with, and this created a backlog that I am still working on. I’ll soon have photos of several new species to add to my galleries—Buller’s shearwater, fairy prion, white-faced storm-petrel, and of course New Zealand storm-petrel.
A second attempt to catch birds was launched in November and I joined a new group of keen stormie chasers. This time I had the job of firing the net gun—an ingenious collection of backyard bits attached to a bbq gas bottle—which meant a lot of frustration floating around in a small inflatable boat as swift like NZ storm petrels evaded capture, and very few opportunities to photograph. Mechanical trouble, sharks and nice birds kept things interesting, but by the last day it was looking like another unsuccessful catching trip. Then, on the last catching day for the season things came together and by the time we started back for shore we had caught and fitted transmitters to FIVE New Zealand storm-petrels! Fingers are crossed that these birds will soon start to reveal some of their secrets.
The next few months are still looking rather busy but I’ll be working at processing and uploading new images, including pelagic seabirds, shorebirds and more as I quickly as I can.