Golden Bay Big Day 2018

Upcoming bird-watching trips and other birding events. Announce your counts, field trips, working bees, cost-share birding trips etc.
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kengeorge
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Joined: Thu Dec 31, 2009 8:38 pm
Location: Golden Bay

Golden Bay Big Day 2018

Postby kengeorge » Mon Sep 24, 2018 5:49 am

Local birder Paddy Gillooly, who runs the tourism and wader birding trips out onto Farewell Spit here in Golden Bay (http://www.farewellspit.com) has proposed the idea of a Golden Bay Big Day, provisionally the weekend 3rd and 4th November. A small team of local birders (including myself) did a Big Day here in Golden Bay on Labour Weekend 3 years ago. We only did a daylight hours day (about 9 hours- no nocturnals) and ticked 59 species just by driving around the Bay. Our Big Day also did not include a run out onto Farewell Spit, where we could have potentially picked up another 6-10 species. For birders, Golden Bay is ideal because of the proximity of native and beech forest, scrub, farmland, lakes, ponds, gravel roads, coastal and estuaries, plus Farewell Spit and other nearby wader roosting areas (Tomatea Point and Rototai). If you were really hardcore, you could also hike part way up the Heaphy and tick Takahe and Great Spotted Kiwi! I have lived here in Golden Bay and birded the local area extensively since 2009, and I would provide everybody with my Golden Bay location guide. The Big Day proposal would be to run the day from noon on Saturday 3rd November thru to noon Sunday 4th, ending in Collingwood for a species count, team ticks and refreshments. Paddy would run dedicated birding trips out onto the Spit on both days, depending on the tides. Running it from noon till noon would give people the chance to get over into Golden Bay on Saturday morning, an easy 2 hour drive from Nelson airport. To keep this Big Day consistent with other NZ regions, the rules would follow the excellent summary posted by Russell Cannings elsewhere on the Birding NZ site. Before Paddy and I proceed any further with planning the event, would anybody be keen to come over and have a crack at it? As I mentioned above, the current best tally is 59 species, some of you top birders should be able to push that out to 70 and above. Cheers all, Ken George.
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RussCannings
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Re: Golden Bay Big Day 2018

Postby RussCannings » Mon Sep 24, 2018 6:07 pm

Hi Ken,

That sounds like a great idea and I would certainly be interested in future years (even better if on a long weekend or school holidays), however I'm anticipating the birth of my first child around then so probably not allowed! ;)

Hope it works out as that's a tremendous corner of the country and having all competitors in the same area in the same day certainly adds a great element that is tricky to achieve in more national competitions.

Russ
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kengeorge
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Joined: Thu Dec 31, 2009 8:38 pm
Location: Golden Bay

Re: Golden Bay Big Day 2018

Postby kengeorge » Tue Sep 25, 2018 12:05 pm

Hi Russ,
All the best with the family addition, that'll rein in the birding activity a bit.......
Cheers
Ken
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kengeorge
Posts: 121
Joined: Thu Dec 31, 2009 8:38 pm
Location: Golden Bay

Re: Golden Bay Big Day 2018

Postby kengeorge » Tue Oct 16, 2018 11:48 am

Unfortunately the Big Day idea here in Golden Bay has been put off until next year. Paddy from Farewell Spit Tours (who had intended running dedicated wader trips out on the Spit) has had something come up so has had to pull out. Anybody interested could still come to the Bay for that weekend of course, in addition to all the bush and open farm land birds, you can still get many of the Farewell Spit waders just be walking along the Spit for 4-5 kms. The currently resident Eastern Curlew may even still be here, if it's hung around all winter.......... who knows?

Ken

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