BLACK KITE near Meremere/Mercer

[rukuhia]

Looking at kite now in swamp between oram road and island block

[Liam Ballard]

Just wondering, is there a website that keeps track of vagrants and their location? It would be useful info to have, I'm wondering if there are some easy vagrants I can add near Ngaruawahia..

[Neil Fitzgerald]

Just wondering, is there a website that keeps track of vagrants and their location? It would be useful info to have, I'm wondering if there are some easy vagrants I can add near Ngaruawahia..

That is something we've been thinking about doing here in a more structured way, but haven't quite got there yet. I'm not aware of anything known near Ngaruawahia (but you could find something).

[Liam Ballard]

Yeah, maybe some kind of Google's "my maps" could be used... I've got time over the holidays if I could help... (although my IT skills don't stretch past year 10 IT advanced... ☺)

[George Hobson]

Yeah, maybe some kind of Google's "my maps" could be used... I've got time over the holidays if I could help... (although my IT skills don't stretch past year 10 IT advanced... ☺)

I'm pretty good with tech stuff, would be keen to be a part of organising something
Would probably be good to either start a new thread or start PMing if anything were to happen to stop taking this thread off topic.

[rukuhia]

(320.45 KiB) Viewed 5148 times

here is my best photo.

[Michael]

499.JPG here is my best photo.

Wow!!

To be honest I thought Russell had gone mad and started a chain of people coming in with mad sightings! Nope. I should know to trust Russell more!

Regretting seeing this species in Australia two months ago now

[RussCannings]

Well done rukuhia! Great to see it's sticking around.

As for rare bird-tracking software, eBird is another option as you can subscribe to rare bird alerts, search for recent sightings of birds not on your list at the local, provincial, or national level. You can also explore all recent/historical sightings at hotspots of interest (eg Whangamarino).

As a general rule, there aren't many vagrants in NZ at any one time, but the more people get out, the more they will be found!

PM me for more info, and we'll leave this thread for Black Kite updates.

Russ C

[Logan]

Saw the bird today some time around 1 30 PM. I spent a couple hours driving along island block road looking mainly over the land towards Oram road but had no luck there. I then drove up to Oram road and came back down State Highway 1 and about halfway between Oram and Island block road I saw it coming towards me to my left. It was flying relatively low and I was able to make out the V in the tail. I was unable to refind it afterwards unfortunately. There are loads of harriers in the area and I must have looked at at least 10 different birds along island block road and the stretch of highway where I saw the black kite. There was even a harrier within 50m of the kite when I spotted it. Thanks Russ for the heads up and thanks also to Rukuhia and others who have followed up with invaluable info. For anyone looking for the bird remember to drive safely and watch your speed, I saw three cops parked up along the highway in the time I was there.

[ourspot]

We’re at Miranda for a couple of days and since we’re so close we thought we’d try and find the Black Kite at Meremere. Got there about 1pm today and parked by the rail crossing at the start of Oram Rd. We searched the sky and surrounds for about an hour with no luck though did see plenty of harriers quartering around. Drove down to Island Block Rd and did a run along there sighting lots more harriers, then ended up back where we’d started at Oram Road at about 3pm for another search.

Finally about 3.45pm, in the direction of the train tracks, we saw something flying differently to the harriers and when we got the scope on it we saw it was the Black Kite with it’s the distinctive forked tail and flat wings in flight. We watched it for about 15 mins as it rose higher and higher on the currents way up into the sky. We had been watching the harriers on the currents during the day and none went nearly as high as the Black Kite which seemed to be right up near the clouds. We were super excited to find such a rare vagrant :). We then packed up and began to drive out of Oram Road to head back to Miranda when we saw it again flying low over the willow trees towards SH1. We drove out onto SH1 and pulled over on the side of the road about a third of the way towards Island Block Road and watched it flying about 100 meters away, back and forwards across the road for about 5 minutes until it flew off into the swamp area and out of sight.

What a fantastic day and thanks to Russ and Bob for the great info on where to look - much appreciated.

PS .. sorry about the poor photo, but it’s the best one we got

Cheers
Scott, Helen, Ollie, Zef and Jay
•• The Great New Zealand Bird Tour 2016 ••