BirdingNZ.net

Yesterday afternoon, Fraser Gurney reported seeing 107 Great Crested Grebe on the Lake. They do congregate here in winter, but that's a massive total. Not sure what recent year counts have been like, but the Council keep records. The winter wader count for Canterbury should have been on Sunday, but there was a massive shooting event at Waihora/lake Ellesmere also planned for Sunday, so Birds NZ will try for its count next Sunday 28th June. One year this winter count was postponed 4 times due to bad weather, hopefully not tis time.

Hi Jan, it was indeed a massive total and an impressive sight to see them all together. Hopefully it's a sign of good things with our grebe population.

Yep, I'm hoping Andrew C sees this and lets us have some recent counts. Are you coming on the count on Sunday?

Yes hopefully I'll be at the count, depending on whether a trip on Saturday goes ahead or is postponed to Sunday.

yeah, 100-150 is what we used to get (sometimes over 200) but numbers had declined in recent years so thats a good count this year.

93 Crested Grebe, 978 NZ Scaup, 7 Mute Swan, 2 White Heron, 156 Pied Stilt on Lake Forsyth 22 June.

That lake is full of Perch. (so called pest fish) but has to be one of the reasons they gather there in such numbers in winter right to feed on juv perch? The food supply? If so a good case of a more resilient acclimatised fish providing a boon to native wildlife in waterways of ever-decreasing quality.

On kind of a similar tack, Has anybody noticed a big drop in Little Black Shag numbers at Pegasus Wetlands lately? Just seasonal? I've also witnessed a lot of shags traveling past the wetland but lower numbers actually hunting in it. Can't remember the last time I saw a shag come up with a food item. Also the Bitterns hung around and were quite easy to find last year but I've only had one brief sighting this year. The stink coming out of one of the drains going directly into the wetland from Pegasus township this winter has been a lot more obvious too. I'm hoping this wetland hasn't suddenly hit a tipping point for small fish species and the general food chain out there. As an angler watching the massive decline in the basic food chain in so many waterways (frogs and tadpoles are almost a distant memory) it's a wonder there's enough lowland, still waterways left holding good fish stocks to support Bittern, Shags, Grebes etc.

Adam, I totally agree with your comments on perch at lake ellesmere. That’s the reason why they’re on both lake Forsyth and the Okana river but numbers have fallen from 300 to 100 on the former and 7 pairs to about 3 pairs on the latter over the last ten years. I was a real concern some years ago when anglers were encouraged to fish for perch on the okana - the river isn’t very wide so increased angler presence during the breeding season presents a greater disturbance impact

is odd that Lake ellesmere does not have the same perch population, i know that in the past the lower reaches of the halswell river had perch but unsure if this still the case