This past week has seen the first recorded sighting of a Red-footed Booby on mainland New Zealand. The first ever New Zealand sighting was last year on a Heritage Expeditions trip to the Kermadec Islands. The Red-footed Booby was seen at the Muriwai Gannet colony last week and Edin took an early morning trip last Friday to try and see it before heading home from Auckland. Her trip was without success and when she made it home her disappointed was clear. We left for our annual holiday at Mount Maunganui the next day but the disappointment was still gnawing at her so with a rubbish weather forecast for Sunday we decided that six hours in the car was a reasonable place to be and chose to head north on a Booby mission.
It was one of those scenarios where success didn’t seem terribly likely but the adventure of trying made it worth it. The effort would be memorable even if no Booby was found. If we didn’t go we definitely would not find it.
We headed up through wind and rain with the Auckland Southern Motorway providing its usual delights with a jam from before Drury until the Takanini turnoff. A final shower just as we rigged up our gear at Muriwai had us hide in the car for 5 minutes as it passed, then down through the wind whipped pungency of Gannets to the lower viewing platform. Almost immediately Edin found a bird perched on a branch, something Gannets never do, and a quick shot confirmed that it had red feet. Our Booby mission was a success!
We spent the rest of the afternoon photographing it on its perch as it unfortunately didn’t fly. Sea conditions were the roughest I have seen there but the wind was superb for the flying Gannets returning from their day of fishing. There was an endless escalator of birds descending to their partners, nests and chicks, some almost hovering at arms length as they drifted down. The only drawback was that the rain showers were replaced by guano showers from the clouds of Gannets above us. Rain jackets helped a little but by the end we and our gear were well anointed in whitewash. Minor problem more than offset by a Booby and endless glory of Gannets. A brief passing shower was not enough to rinse off our rain jackets but gave us a stunning rainbow for a while.
An unexpected bonus of the trip was meeting Colin Miskelly, vertebrate curator at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa who coordinates NZBirdsOnline and whom we have been in email contact with for years as image contributors. We were feeling quite dedicated having driven 3 hours when he told us he had driven up 6 hours from Wellington just to see the Booby! It was great to chat with Colin and interesting to hear that our Booby is likely from the Galapagos based on its dark tail. A detail I would not have known the significance of otherwise.
The sensible choice would have been to leave early and have daylight for most of our trip back to the Bay of Plenty, but Muriwai is hard to leave. The light just gets better and the winds were perfect so, as usual, we stayed until we ran out of light. A quick burger and coffee stop on the Southern Motorway and $20 of exhorbitant Auckland diesel at the top of the Bombays had us replenished for the trip home. Wind and rain again accompanied us and we rolled into bed just before 1am after showering the Gannet souvenirs from our hair, buzzing with excitement from our Muriwai Booby mission.
See Edin’s blog for her account of this shared memory. The New Zealand Birds Online page for the Red-footed Booby has been updated with this historic sighting and currently features one of Edin’s photos as the species master image.
Photos with the Nikon D500 and Nikon 300mm f4 PF lens. This is proving to be an incredible combination for birds. Light, razor sharp and blindingly fast to lock and hold focus.
