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Just a little north of the Goldfields Shopping
Centre at the carpark on Brown Street is
Thames’ best kept little secret that will
make anyone’s walk or bike trek a little more
interesting. The Karaka Bird Hide.
This enticing little Hobbit hut is reached by
walking through shrub ‘tunnel’, clomping
over a wooden boardwalk, and voila!...a
mangrove shoreline hugging the Firth, and
well above the estuary muck, and shorebirds
4 3
6
5
1
2
11 10 9
8 7
galore, all viewable from the inside windows
of the protective hide. An “urban spyhole for
shorebird watching” as one GPS website put
it. Best times to view shorebirds? 2 hours
before and after high tide.
Adding to the interest is that this hide was
built from compensation funds from the
Greenpeace Rainbow Warriorbombing in
Auckland in July, 1885. The current Rainbow
Warrior visited Auckland this July for a
commemorative open house.
View our story at
flipview/autumn_winter_2014/index.html#13.
Photos by Alan Duff www.crep.co.nz
The Karaka Bird Hutide BIRDS OF THE FIRTH
The Firth is one of the major stopping
points for thousands of shore and
migratory wader birds. “One of the three
most important coastal areas for shorebirds
in New Zealand.”
In spring, see godwits and knots arriving
from Siberia and Alaska; in the autumn they
head north again. Pied oystercatchers and
wrybills are native birds traveling from other
parts of New Zealand.
These illustrations of shore birds are from
the ‘Miranda Shorebird Teaching Resource’
from the Dept. of Conservation’s list of pdf
materials. (Search for the term to find the
DOC page which lists many pdf documents.)
1. Spur-winged plover
2. White-faced heron
3. Variable oystercatcher
4, South Island pied
oystercatcher
5. Bar-tailed godwit
6. Pied stilt
COMMON WADERS ALONG
THE SHORES OF THE FIRTH
7. New Zealand
dotterel
8. Red knot
9. Turnstones
10. Banded
dotterel
11. Wrybill plover
Pukorokoro Miranda Shorebird Centre
Gleaming white banks of shells, cheniers, line the Miranda coast, part
of a system which has built up the coastal plain over the last 4500
years. The abundance of food found here is what attracts tens of
thousands of shorebirds.
Birding information, environmental education, downloadable teaching
guides and handouts, accommodation and a comprehensive natural
history bookshop can be found at the Miranda Shorebird Centre, open
7 days a week. Visit
In March 2007 a female bar-tailed godwit, known from her leg flag
as E7, took off from the Firth of Thames and flew into the record
books. When she returned to the Firth six months later, she had flown
nearly 30,000km on her migration to breeding grounds in Alaska,
via the Yellow Sea along the coast of China. She returned to NZ in
one nonstop flight of 11,680km in just over 8 days – a record for any
non-seabird. The implanted satellite tags used to track E7 and other
godwits were attached at the Miranda Shorebird Centre in association
with an international network of researchers.
October 5th, John Drummond sent an email to notify many of us in
Tairua that the godwits were back and flying over Tairua Harbour.
Thanks John!
Local bar-tailed godwit is world record holder!
Image from
‘Tracking Alaska’s Godwits’
by the Cornell Lab of Ornitology.
View the video at
2015: Year of the Godwit
22 COROMANDEL LIFE 2015 SPRING/HOLIDAY
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