Team efforts help build grebe nests
There will be no empty nest syndrome in Te Anau if the Department of Conservation and a group of children have anything to do with it.
On Saturday, children and families came together in Te Anau to build nests for the endangered Australasian crested grebe near the Te Anau Bird Sanctuary.
Community ranger Michelle Crouchley said DOC had been working with Kids Restore the Kepler and the Department of Corrections to make sturdy nesting frames for the birds, who only nest on top of the water.
Changing water levels on Lake Te Anau meant the grebe nests could be destroyed and any eggs laid in them could be washed away, she said.
Prisoners at the Otago Correctional Facility in Milton had built the wooden frames for the rafts, which the nests were then built in, and then the Te Anau-based children from the Kids Restore the Kepler programme had helped to construct six nests for the grebes.
A plastics company in Dunedin had donated the plastic containers, which were attached to the bottom of the frames to provide buoyancy.
‘‘It’s really cool that it’s lots of people working together to make it happen,’’ Crouchley said.
The bird sanctuary had also put up a boom on the lake so waves wouldn’t topple the nests when conditions on the lake became choppy.
‘‘It’s stopping [the waves] before it gets there [to the nests],’’ she said.
The birds, which were once plentiful across South Island lakes, had become rare and were predated upon by stoats.
The grebes were starting courtship behaviour and were likely to start nesting in the next few weeks, she said.