Te Araroa 2022 ebirding

[Nakilad]

Kia ora all,
I meant to post this way back in January but life got a bit busy. My wife and I are on currently walking Te Araroa-The Long Pathway. We started in Bluff on January 1st and just yesterday we completed the South Island section at Ship Cove on the Queen Charlotte Track. In a couple of days we will start the North Island section and hope to reach Cape Reinga late May.

One of the tasks I set myself to give a bit more meaning to our adventure was to record an eBird checklist for the NZ Bird Atlas at least once a day for the entirety of our journey. So far I've only missed 3 days out of 89. But I've completed 121, so on average... I've recorded 70 species, although I missed several SI species I had hoped to see. But that's happened to us all, right?

If you're interested you can read my most recent trip report for Tasman/Marlborough here, and you should be able to view the rest of them easily https://ebird.org/tripreport/45066

Finally, if anyone lives near the Te Araroa Trail in the North Island and would like to host us for a night when we pass through please message me. Our minimum needs are a place to pitch the tent and cook dinner, and a hot shower. We can repay you with stories from the trail and Bird talk.

[Patrick Crowe]

Nice work Vaughan, I’ve been following your progress through Marlborough on eBird. What SI species have you missed that you were hoping to see?

[Nakilad]

Hi Patrick. I missed kaka, and surprisingly kea. Although I heard kea once or twice, I didn't see them at any huts or even Arthurs Pass. I hoped to see mohua and OF kākāriki at Hurunui Valley, probably a long shot. Somehow I also missed whio, but I'll see them in the NI I'm sure. But highlights were falcon and white heron.

[Nakilad]

Kia ora,

Quick update from Northland. We're now walking Ninety Mile Beach with 3 days to go before finishing at Cape Reinga.
Here's a link to my Northland (so far) trip report if anyone's interested.
https://ebird.org/tripreport/57703

Leaving Ahipara this morning I started seeing dead little blue penguins so I thought I'd do a dead birds beach patrol as well as ebirding. Over 10 km of beach I found 75 penguins, 1 Albatross sp. and 6 diving petrel. Seems like a lot of penguins. Extrapolated over the 30km we walked that's 225. I know extrapolation only works if there's a fairly even distribution, but I continued to see them frequently. So I think it's a reasonable estimate. It'll be interesting to see if the numbers are the same to the end of the beach. I'll submit beach patrol reports at a later date.