Native wildlife fall foul to increasingly wild weather
The rough seas and driving easterlies are playing havoc with New Zealand’s birdlife.
Dead and starving penguins have been reported at Kaiko¯ura, on Auckland’s Waiheke Island and North Shore, and on the Coromandel Peninsula. Hundreds of seabirds have been found sick or dying on Northland’s east coast beaches.
Department of Conservation principal science adviser Graeme Taylor said La Nina conditions at sea since the spring had increased ocean temperatures, making it harder for young penguins to find fish.
‘‘It’s likely that lots of young penguin chicks left their nests in November and December,’’ he said.
‘‘They are now struggling to find food as they’re on their own and learning to fend for themselves at sea.’’
Whangarei Bird Recovery Centre manager Robert Webb said people had been finding large numbers of dead or dying shearwaters, petrels and little blue penguins strewn on many Northland beaches, particularly Ruakaka and Waipu, since the high winds began last Sunday.
He said about 40 birds had been brought into the centre in the past week. About 25 had survived.
Fifteen other dead birds had also been brought into the centre.
Webb said some would have been old birds that would have come ashore to die anyway, but other birds being washed ashore had been hammered by the conditions.
‘‘Most will have been rolled about in the surf so they will have water in their lungs and sand in their feathers.
‘‘They need two to three days to dry out, get warm and re-oil their feathers and they will be fine – if not, they would have died anyway.’’
Webb says some may have been bitten by kahawai and kingfish as they flapped about in the water.
‘‘Rescuers often think the lost limbs and bites are from dog attacks, but the exhausted birds fall prey to fish at sea and black gulls on the beach.’’
While the centre was happy to take birds, he said residents at the coast could also place any shearwaters or petrels in a box in a quiet place with something soft and warm to sit on.
‘‘Don’t feed them or give them water – this could possibly kill them.
‘‘They start trying to get out of the box when they are ready to go. When recovered take them back to the beach, preferably an estuary, and let them go.
‘‘Anyone finding weak blue penguins should put them up in the dunes or grass bank where there is shelter and away from the high tides. Once they have recovered they will ‘waddle’ their way back to the beach.’’
Waiheke Native Bird Rescue founder Karen Saunders said about 10 little blue penguin deaths had been reported to the service in the past 10 days.
Two severely underweight penguins were brought to her on Sunday and another arrived on Wednesday.
One adult and one baby penguin died, while a baby called Snapper was displaying a stunning will to survive, she said.
Saunders was concerned that both climate change and over-fishing were behind the influx of starving little blue penguins, which are an endangered species classified as ‘declining’.
‘‘The oceans are just dying. awful.’’
She wanted to see the ocean around Waiheke Island become a marine reserve.
‘‘A huge number of seabirds come to the Hauraki Gulf – it’s an amazing ecological area of our world and we’re just destroying what we’ve got.’’
Last year, 14 baby penguins were brought to the Waiheke bird rescue centre and they all died.
‘‘All the babies were coming out of the nests because the parents abandon the nests.
‘‘If they can’t find food, they keep looking for food and don’t go back because they have got nothing to feed their babies.’’
Penguins often come into the centre weighing less than 500 grams, when a normal adult should weigh 1100 grams.
‘‘They have lost such much weight, they are going into multiple organ dysfunction and haven’t lasted more than a couple of hours,’’ Saunders said.
Stormy weather coupled with king tides on January 4 and 5 was exhausting for penguins, who could not sleep in burrows close to the coast, she said.
People should keep dogs on leads on beaches for 48 hours after storms to make sure they don’t harm exhausted seabirds, Saunders said.
After the storm on January 4 and 5, about 14 birds were brought into the bird rescue centre, a huge percentage of the 19 birds Saunders has seen this year.
These included a little shearwater, a diving petrel, blue petrels, a fairy prion, kingfishers, and tui.
Some were underweight and others were exhausted by the storm.
Getting an average of one new bird a day was hard work for Saunders, whose role is voluntary.
‘‘It’s been chaos,’’ she said. It’s