Nankeen Night Heron Upokongaro

[Amber Calman]

Its for when I go to wellington. I've been wanting to do it for a while, so we are going to on a heron hunt

[Neil Fitzgerald]

In my opinion it'd be better waiting for the population to boom rather than go looking for them, they are pretty secretive so you'd be beter of waiting for larger numbers. But that's just what I would do.

You might be waiting a while. After a couple or few decades they are still scarce.

[Amber Calman]

yep thats what i thought

[George Hobson]

Let's go in 50 years how does that sound Young Birder?

[Amber Calman]

umm maybe lol.

[RussCannings]

I checked out that spot in January (2015) but the cafe was closed on both of my visits. I hadn't found this thread yet so didn't know which trees to look in however we checked through all the likely trees viewable from the roads fairly thoroughly without success on two occasions. Obviously night-herons can be tricky to spot at the best of times and often shift day-roosts randomly at times. If the cafe owner reckons they're still there then I'd say you have a good shot at finding them, especially if you wait til dusk.

Fortunately we did catch a look at 5 leaving the traditional Kemps Pole roost (further up the Whanganui River on the west side) though the chances of good views would be much better at the cafe by the sounds of things.

With such a small resident population (as far as we know), I'd say it's well worth visiting now as they could just as easily fizzle out as expand their range in NZ. Plenty of other great spots to check out along the Kapiti Coast and Manawatu Estuary to make for an awesome birding day/weekend.

Russ Cannings
Looking out for suspicious blobs in Cambridge, NZ

[andrewcrossland]

The new version of the Heather & Robertson Field guide reckons the pop is now 50 birds. Can anyone comment on the veracity of that?

[Neil Fitzgerald]

That is what Peter Frost has on nzbirdsonline (2013), but doesn't say what the source of that figure is. Hopefully he will chime in.

[ourspot]

Had a couple of attempts to try and find the Nankeen Night Heron early this week but no luck. The Cafe Owner at Upokongaro said they haven't seen or heard it for a while, and we did a couple of after dusk attempts at Kemps Pole as well but we didn't see or hear any calls, tho did hear some tree rusting in the usual spot. A landowner told that they had seen some a few weeks back at the normal place, but I was also told by another source that they may be dispersed in pairs at the moment for the breeding season, and that winter is possibly a better time for catching a bunch roosting together. Oh well we learned a lot about them, got to go on a stunning drive and we'll just have to come back for another visit some other time.

Cheers Scott

[Matthias]

I went to Kemps Pole on Wednesday. I did not find any birds in the trees, but when I scanned the Whanganui river from Papaiti Rd, I found one adult Night Heron in breeding plumage perched in a tree at the riverside just below Kemps Pole at around 8:10 pm.


Cheers,
Matthias