One Brown Creeper, Two Swallows

The next couple of posts are all about birds; birds we saw at Whites Bay, Marlborough before we crossed over to the North Island and birds we saw at Zealandia in Wellington, after our visit with the most famous bird of all, Sirocco the Kakapo.

This is a Brown Creeper/Pīpipi, and some have said that this is the one of the hardest birds in New Zealand to photograph, and I would have to agree with them.

Brown Creepers are endemic and are found in a wide range of forest and scrubby habitats in the South Island only. I saw my first and, up until now, last Brown Creepers when we visited Weatherstons goldfield near Lawrence a year or so ago. They are a small, noisy flocking bird seldom seen but often heard as they pass through the forest canopy high above. They rarely stop for long as the noisy chattering flock moves quickly on through the forest, feeding.

I was lucky enough to spot half a dozen birds making their way through the bush near the van & at window height, while we were parked in the DOC camp at Whites Bay- one of the advantages of having dark tinted windows is people & birds can’t see in.

At first I was thinking what are those birds, they don’t look familiar. Then I couldn’t believe my luck as it dawned on me, they were Brown Creepers! I was out the door and following their chatter over to a stand of bush on the inside of the campground. I spent the next couple of hours trying to get the ‘money shot’. I got plenty of ‘bum shots’; they are quite shy and hide their heads well. They are also fast moving and with the dark bush it was hard to catch them, and in fact I had a fair few empty frame shots or shots with just the last couple of centimetres of their tail feathers as they disappeared out of frame.

Brown Creepers are insectivorous, but do eat some fruit. Their main prey are beetles, spiders, moths and caterpillars and I think they were catching insects attracted to flowering Five-finger (Pseudopanax arboreus) here. And that's what held them in the area for awhile, a plentiful food source. They were certainly cute little birds, I loved their bandit eye stripe and long legs.

Quietly moving about on the ground around me while I was targeting the Brown Creepers was another very shy bird, the introduced Dunnock or Hedge Sparrow who has the most beautiful song. This one wasn’t as shy as most I’ve come across and followed along as I moved around the bush. It stayed nearby all the time I was looking up but when I looked down at it, it would quickly move into the undergrowth until I moved on. Then it would appear again. I think it was probably catching the insects I was disturbing.

There were a couple of puddles of water & mud on the track at Whites Bay with two Welcome Swallows doing circuits collecting mud for their nest building. In fact there were three couples trying to collect mud but one pair spent most of their time chasing the others off. I tried to catch them a few times but they were disturbed easily and I couldn’t get close enough for any decent shots. Even after I re-filled their puddle with water when it dried out.

So I was thrilled to find another pair collecting mud from a puddle beside the road at Rarangi when we moved over the hill to the DOC camp there.

And this pair didn’t have any competitors so they were free to spend all day flying back and forward from their nest site to the puddle without any interruption.

Which meant I could lay in wait for them knowing that they would be back every 5 minutes or so. They were flying a large circuit from a rock wall near the beach, across a carpark, then the campground to the road edge. And this time I had a couple of small bushes to hide behind while I waited for their return. They could see me when I stepped out to take the photo but they didn’t seem to be too fazed.

They took an occasional brief rest together on a large piece of driftwood on the beach but then they’d be quickly back to the task at hand, always arriving at and leaving the puddle together, keeping in contact all the way with quiet chattering.

Welcome Swallows are a self introduced species from Australia, they first appeared in the North Island in the late 1950s and increased greatly through the 60s and 70s until now they are very common throughout New Zealand.

If you look closely you can see that the mud is collected on the top of the bill, they sort of head-butt the mud pushing the bill through so it mounds up on top, which is much faster than trying to peck at it and carry it home. They would also collect a lot more doing it this way.

And as most would know that have tried to catch the swallow in flight, it’s a very hard thing to do. They are tiny and extremely fast flyers weaving and ducking and diving. I did have the advantage of knowing that they would be leaving or arriving at the puddle but it was still very hard to lock the focus on them as they flew in and out. Most of these photos were taken at a shutter speed of 1/2000 to 1/2500 and still the wings are a little blurred. Still blurred wings gives a sense of movement so I’m happy with them.

Don't forget to click on the photos to enlarge, if you want to have a closer look.

Gabriel's Gully, Lawrence

I got a bit ahead of myself with all the excitement of the Oyster Festival & the storm so I’m now stepping back a week or so to catch up on the blogs I missed from our last camping site at Grays Dam, Gabriel's Gully in Lawrence.

What a beautiful spot, it was very pretty with the trees at the end of their autumn colours & the grasses & reeds reaching right down to the pond’s edge.



Backlit trees at sunrise on the pond

It was a quite a small pond with just a few water fowl making it their home; a pair of coots, a couple of shags, a few welcome swallows and a lone female paradise duck that kept me awake for most of the first night. She was calling for her partner and I felt very sad for her, David found some fresh empty cartridge cases on the ground & we can only assume that her mate was shot by some lazy scumbag who couldn’t be bothered driving out of town to a legitimate place to go duck shooting.

Unlike other ducks, Paradise pair for life & she was calling for him all night & all the next day. Female paradise also have very loud calls. At one stage another pair flew in, the male ahead of his mate and the pond female got all excited doing a head bobbing swim all around him. Until the other female landed when all hell broke loose. After a good scrap between the females the other pair flew off & our female resumed her calls. It was with great relief when I got up on the third day to see that overnight a lone male had flown in and taken up residence with the female. She looked very happy swimming around the edge showing her new mate the best places to feed. Peace was restored to the pond.

Other than the quacking duck it was a very peaceful spot, we stayed for 3 nights and on each there were 2-3 other RVs sharing the clearing at the end of the track with us. Gabriel’s Gully is named after Gabriel Read who discovered gold there in May1861. This was the beginning of the Otago Gold Rush, by July there were 150 men working the gully and by September over 6000 people were camped throughout the gully in amongst the diggings protecting their small claims.

By the end of 1861 there were over 10,000 people on the goldfields, imagine 10,000 people, tents and dirt piles spread out down the gully shown in the photo below. Except that the valley floor is now a lot higher than it was back then. Water races from local rivers & dams (Grays Dam included) fed water into the area to wash the hillsides away into the sluice boxes to recover the gold. Gunpowder & dynamite were used to break up the rock. The tailings slowly filled up the valley floor.

Grays Dam is at the end of the bottom track that disappears out the left of the photo (a photo taken with my cell phone while on the 90 minute walk around the gully)

Across the gully and at the top right of the photo above is Blue Spur. Blue Spur settlement was originally at the head of Gabriel’s Gully on the flat but when that ground was needed for mining the township was moved to the top of the ridge away from the flooding & mining. The town prospered from 1864-1868 with two of every type of store to service the miners, a school opened in 1867  (it was closed in 1925) and during the 1880s when Blue Spur had a population of 500, there were over 200 pupils & five teachers. Today all that remains of Blue Spur are these two buildings one a residence & one the butchers shop.

Just one gully away from Gabriel’s was Weatherstons goldfield, discovered not long after Gabriels and claimed to have had more gold recovered in a four week period than Gabriels. Over 1500 miners flooded into Weatherstons within a few days which led onto Weatherstons being known as the gayest & noisiest town on the goldfields. It also suffered the fastest reduction of miners when news  came through that gold had been discovered near Dunstan further inland.

Today Weatherstons is well known for its mass plantings of daffodils and 100 year old rhododendron bushes along with the ruins of the 1884 Black Horse Brewery. The brewery was once Otago’s most successful provincial brewery and that was during prohibition. In 1923  the brewing rights were purchased by NZ Breweries, the brewery closed down & the workers offered work at Speights Brewery in Dunedin.

On one of the information boards was this photo of the ladies pushing for prohibition, looking at some of those faces I doubt anybody would want to give them a kiss anyway!

The daffodils were first planted in 1895 and it was thought that over 1 million bulbs were planted during the first few years covering 10-15 acres of the hillside beside the brewery. No expense was spared and  prices as high as £100 were paid for single bulbs from the Netherlands. Incredible when the average wage was only around £5. People came from far & wide to see the daffodils when they were in bloom, the flowers were also picked by school children & sold for charity. In 1912 the first train excursions from Dunedin arrived; 2 trains of 13 carriages each organised by the Dunedin Horticultural Society. In 2005 the daffodil fields were once again opened up to public display, the first time in 50 years.

It's a pity we visited the ruins at the beginning of winter, the site didn’t look that attractive with bare trees, wet & muddy ground and overgrown abandoned buildings although the lovely red of the hawthorn berries added a bit of interest & colour.

And I was finally able to grab a shot of another New Zealand native that not too many people would have seen or know about. This is a Brown Creeper (Pipipi- can you guess the sound they make?) and they are actually quite common throughout the South Island but are very hard to see (and photograph) as they flock & move quite fast through the tree canopy feeding and calling to each other. Against the light of the sky they could be mistaken for sparrows. This isn’t a great photo but at least I have a record until I can get a better one!

In an old farm yard near Weatherston I spotted this; I wonder where the lion escaped to……

And once again after an afternoon of exploring we got home in time for me to catch some reflections-

And finally I need to add the photo that is the blog header at the moment (it'll be gone soon). I also sent this photo off the NZMCA for their "I Love Winter" photo competition and they made it their Facebook header.......

.......which actually replaced my Lake Dunstan storm photo!