Okarito Boat Tours» herons

Summer summary

admin — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:33:58 +0000

Summer this year was beautiful on the West Coast and we enjoyed one of the best seasons for birds in years. The native flax flowered profusely starting early in the spring and carried on for a good few months. Flax flowers provide birds with a bounty of nectar and the village and Okarito waterways were loaded with Tui’s and bellbirds.

The white herons had an incredibly successful breeding season and by early January we had juvenile birds joining the adults on the lagoon. Swade took this marvelous photo of an adult bird with a small eel while on a morning trip.

Royal spoonbills were also around in huge numbers and entertaining as always with their animated feeding habits. We also had spotted shags, good numbers of pied stilts and oystercatchers, white fronted terns, caspian terns and some lesser knots.

The godwits arrived early in the spring, then vanished for a few weeks when the lagoon water levels were quite high. They returned as the water levels retreated and then all summer we saw them feeding on the tidal flats. They looked rounded and rosy before heading back to Alaska for their breeding season just a few weeks ago – we wish them well on their arduous journey. There remains a grouping of juvenile godwits here for the winter.

We are now having a “mast” year with fruiting of many trees including the tall kahikatea trees which are absolutely loaded with bright orange berries. These are very sweet and another great source of food for tui’s and bellbirds. We also have a large number of fantails around right now and have had some incredibly good sightings of Australasian bitterns! very exciting to have these birds around, both in the village and up the Okarito River.

Our tours will be operating with regular hours until the end of May when we will be readying to leave for Canada for the next few months (June-August) and will resume our trips in September.

Kiwiboomers!

admin — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:04:14 +0000

If you haven’t heard about it, you might like to check out this great website – full of what the 40′s, 50′s, 60′s and 70 somethings are up to in New Zealand!

Lynn Clayton joined us here in Okarito and wrote this article about her experiences – enjoy her writing and stunning photographs.

Okarito Wharf at Dawn

Hope you enjoyed the read and perhaps may just entice you to come see for yourself what this iconic little village is all about!

Okarito in December

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:28:17 +0000

It’s been an interesting spring and early summer in Okarito. In November the mouth of the lagoon blocked off from the sea – this is a natural occurence when the southerly sea swells drop huge amounts of sand and sediment across the mouth and there is not sufficient rainfall flowing out from the lagoon. It put a quick and early end to the whitebaiting season here, which, although disappointing is not as threatening to us as to the Kotuku – the Great White Heron. These birds are nesting just north of Okarito and rely on the whitebait season for them and their newly hatched chicks. Our heron numbers on the lagoon decreased as these birds struggled with the rising waters and had to move further afield for their feed. The godwits also began to disappear as the tidal flats quickly became submerged.

Within 3 weeks, the decision was made to force the lagoon open with a digger which duly arrived and took most of a day to clear the entrance. With a few weeks now of the lagoon being tidal again, and recent rainfalls all is beginning to settle into a more regular routine of flow. And with that, there are good numbers of herons to be seen feeding, royal spoonbills and the godwits have returned once again. They were spotted just yesterday by a keen birder from Britain who just happened by on his way to a conference in Christchurch and joined us for a morning trip. He spotted about 3 dozen godwits feeding on the flats.

The flax is beginning to flower, a bit late this year with cooler than normal temperatures, but the rata has had a brilliant flowering year. We come right up to the tree featured here on the water – the show of red against the rainforest green is the perfect Christmas colouring!