Wildlife Reserves

Bream Bay is an important location for a number of New Zealand's threatened birds, including the fairy tern, New Zealand's most endangered endemic bird. There are only a dozen breeding pairs located in four Northland areas, including the Waipu river mouth. Most of the Waipu and Ruakaka estuaries are dedicated refuges, and are open to the public but anything that disturbs the birds is banned, so no bikes or boats. Tread thoughtfully, obey DOC signage and leave the dogs behind. Search Waipu River Watch on Facebook to follow the feathered and finned happenings.

Geoff Chapple is founder of the Te Araroa Walkway, which traverses the length of NZ, and an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, awarded in 2012 for services to “tramping, tourism and literature”. His latest book Terrain – Travels through a Deep Landscape is available now. Here he walks near the wildlife refuge at the mouth of the Waipu River:

“Shorebirds run the spectrum from awesome down to clown. The godwits, the knots, the curlews have about them the mystical nimbus of their unimaginable journeys to Siberia, and most of the others have, at least with their long legs and beak, a wonderful elegance and poise. The oystercatchers don’t have any such things. They just have character. They seem to hang out in threesomes and talk to each other with piercing cries. They bully the stilts just for fun. They have a muscular stride and are great walkers, and as they go their big red bill taps on every mollusc’s door and overturns the empty shells too. They ransack the beach, and they are its clowns.

I am watching for fairy terns which I had studied in photos by bird photographer Geoff Moon. I’m on the look-out for yellow legs, not red, and a lighter in build than their cousins the white-fronted terns. All terns have a distinctive black cap but the fairy tern cap is less severe and deckleedged. I may have seen one. A single small grey sickle wavered on an inland dune, but I couldn’t get close enough to know, and then the oystercatchers simply took over the game.

Two oystercatcher fledgelings fled into the dunes. One of their parents eyed me. It seemed to me that as the fledgelings were gone I posed no threat. The bigger of the

two birds engaged me anyway. Hey, you big ape! He intercepted my direction of travel and began to strut along about 20 metres in front. I remembered what I’d been told about how they act injured to lure you away from their nest and chicks. I followed briskly.

This was no standard broken wing act. I’d struck the Jim Carrey of the Waipu Spit. He began to reel and limp and stumble. I followed, the bird turned towards the lagoon and left drag marks in the wet sand. One seriously sick oystercatcher. I kept following, and finally, it was all over for the bird.

My persistence had paid off. I’d exhausted it. Its long red legs simply folded up. The whole body went down on the wet sand. The wings flapped feebly. The beak gaped open on its last breath and, as if falling finally on its own sword, the head flopped hopelessly forward and the beak half-buried itself in the mud.

Hands outstretched I advanced. The thing was a wreck. It remained only to put it into my bag and save myself the price of a pie at the Waipu Cove motor camp. One gleaming eye perhaps gave the game away. Bright as a bead. Calibrating speed, distance and at the last moment – hey sucker! – the long red legs kick-launched it, the wings gave a couple of powerful sweeps, and the bird rose clean and unencumbered and flew away over the lagoon.”

Geoff Chapple