Kotoku, Royal Spoonbill population

[CsPFO]

I'm restoring a wetland on my inland Napier property and was surprised to see 4 black billed spoonbill or Royal spoonbill feeding among the mallard flappers we'd released. Wonderful! Can anyone give some info on their current population/ distribution? Wiki says less than 1000 were here in 1996. Cheers.

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[Jan]

Kotuku, [White Heron/Great Egret] are unlikely to breed at your wetland, as their only known nesting site is in South Westland, though they do turn up in breeding plumage in other places and may eventually breed elsewhere, one day.

Royal Spoonbill have increased their numbers a lot in the last 10 yrs and new nesting sites are springing up, like at Lake Ellesmere in Canterbury. So that IS a possible breeding bird at your site. A census was carried out by OSNZ members one winter a few years ago. It was reported in Srn. Bird,[ the magazine of Birds NZ], that's now called just Birds NZ. Someone will be able to give you the numbers.

[Neil Fitzgerald]

I assume the OP is referring to kotuku ngutupapa (royal spoonbill), not white heron. NZ birds online (http://www.nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/royal-spoonbill) notes that the most recent estimate of 959 birds was in 1996. I'm sure it will be much more than that now after 20 years, as they have obviously increased a lot.

[Bill Cash]

Hi ,We have had Royal Spoonbills nesting at the Wairau Lagoons in Marlborough for a number of years now.The first birds nested on driftwood at the mouth of the Opawa/Wairau Rivers the nest year they moved to an island in the middle of the Wairau Lagoon complex. Here they nested on the ground and on top of duck hunters maimai. I did attempt to build a nesting platform out of very dead and very large fallen tree,that was at the edge of a channel in about waist deep water. Within a couple of hours Royal Spoonbills flow in and landed on it, but later pied and little shags took over, fifty three shag nest. If you want to attempt to get Royal Spoonbills to nest at your wetland I would suggest you first establish a good roost site, maybe if they are able to roost overnight safely at your wetland they may think about nesting there sometime in the future. Cheers Bill

[David Riddell]

That paper Jan was referring to is:
Schweigman, P.; Thompson, M. 2012: Results of the royal spoonbill census 2012. Southern Bird 52:7.
It gives the 2012 population as 2300. From memory most of the breeding colonies so far are in the South Island, with Kapiti Island and Rangaunu Harbour the only sites further north. So it'd be pretty special to have spoonbill starting to breed at a North Island wetland, though with the way the numbers are continuing to build it's certainly not impossible.

[Jan]

Thanks v much, David. I find it impossible to find things in back numbers of Southern Bird. You are amazing.
I didn't realise they don't have many breeding sites in the north, so someone positively encouraging them would be great.
I apologise for assuming Kotuku is the White Heron, in my book it is.

[CsPFO]

Hi again. Thanks very much for the information. So seeing 4 spoonbills out of, say, 3000 at present is something special. There were two sighted two days later. I will try to create some nesting sites for them on islands in this fledgling wetland. Any more advice on nest site construction would be welcome. Though we're only just mass-planting now, we have seen bitterns, white heron, many grey heron, teal, hawks predating the mallard flappers we've released, and of course, a plague of pukeko, unwelcome swallows, and Paradise ducks. A link to the facebook page is below, if you're interested.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/PuketapuHawkesBay/posts/

[Liam Ballard]

Just out of interest, why are you introducing mallards? If you are restoring a wetland wouldn't it be better to put in, say, grey teal or shovelers? Or are they for shooting?

[Oscar Thomas]

I'll chime in and say it's great you are happy with seeing some of the 3000 spoonbills , however you should be quite happy with the bittern as there is below 1000 left in NZ and less than 200 White herons in NZ.

[kengeorge]

At the risk of being trivial, there's a couple of comments further up this thread that could be worth a comment. As somebody with a working knowledge of Te Reo, here's my take on the kotuku and kotuku ngutupapa names. Jan you are correct in thinking that kotuku refers to the white heron/egret ardea modesta, as originally that was the only large white heron the Maori people ever saw. Recently the Royal Spoonbills have arrived and are now established. Maori are usually very economical when naming things, so instead of a new name for the new birds, they just adapted the old one. Ngutupapa translates as big black protruding lips. So kotuku ngutupapa basically means a the big white heron with the big black protruding lips, which I reckon is as good a description as any of a Royal Spoonbill......