Postby Jan » Wed Apr 12, 2023 12:26 pm
Thanks for your survey numbers, Andrew.
Te Waihora/lake Ellesmere doesn't have tides. It is a landlocked hapua cut off from the sea by a very long gravel bar. There are others like this, though smaller, down the east coast of the S Is. Te Waihora gets all the runoff from several small rivers, like the Selwyn, Halswell and Kaituna stream.
In periords of high rainfall the lake can rise considerably and it once extended as far inland to where I live in Halswell. Since settlement and farming got underway, a lot of that swampland has been drained, but the lake still tries to expand......
When the level is high, birds go into flooded pasture to feed and there can be masses near the lake in paddocks, but it is very hard to survey all of it.