Pūkorokoro Miranda Shorebird Centre - Arctic Migrants

Pūkorokoro Miranda Shorebird Centre – Arctic Migrants

tony
June 9, 2019
birds / New Zealand

Bar-tailed Godwits in early morning light. Note the moulting flight feathers of the middle 3 birds.

As mentioned in my previous post Pūkorokoro Miranda Shorebird Centre is a top destination for birders wanting to see Arctic migrants during the New Zealand summer. The Bar-tailed Gowits/Kuaka arrive in our spring after a non-stop flight of 12000km over 8 days from Alaska, the longest recorded non-stop flight for a bird. A lot of what we know about this migration has been achieved through work done with birds from Pūkorokoro Miranda Shorebird Centre. They spend our summer gorging on the mudflats to put on condition for a return journey via a refuelling stop in East Asia to arrive back on the tundra in condition to breed and timed to take advantage of hatching insects to raise their chicks. This PDF Educational Resource is a valuable source of information on the birds seen here and uses one of my photos on the cover.

On their arrival they are emaciated having utilised all their fat reserves and metabolised part of their internal organs for energy. They then need to feed up to recover condition and sustain a moult into their breeding plumage before heading back north. This means that they can range from quite ragged subjects to ones with mixed plumage and missing flight feathers right through to well coloured plump birds. During this visit in November they had put on some condition and were moulting flight feathers.

A Bar-tailed Godwit lands on the mudflats. — A Bar-tailed Godwit/Kuaka lands on the mudflats.

Red Knots or Lesser Knots are also commonly seen in good sized flocks at Pūkorokoro Miranda. They migrate to breed in the Russian Far East but a lot less is known about their migration. Like the Godwits they rely on the East Asian- Australasian flyway so are badly impacted by development that is damaging wetlands in China.

Pacific Golden Plover/Kuriri have been the subject of some research at Pūkorokoro Miranda this year as the numbers visiting have plummeted over recent years. An overseas team of researchers worked with local experts to hopefully capture ten birds for satellite tracking. If you have spent time watching these birds you will appreciate what a difficult job it would be to capture one, let alone ten. Three were captured and fitted with satellite tags. All have since left New Zealand and headed for Japan or Guam, one having spent a couple of weeks longer refuelling in New Zealand than the other two. For updates on this project see this link – Where is Goldie.