10th March 2025 – Te Rae o Atiu has fledged 4 chicks already this season, and our first crash lander from the Kowhai colony was picked up off Inland Road. The season is happening. This year we had 42 eggs, 32 of which hatched, and 2 of which died quite young. 26 remained in the colony as of 9th March. This year is much earlier than we have ever seen before.
This year chick weights are up on last year, but still showing 2 periods of loss of weight, where most of the adults struggled to find enough food for their chicks for a period of a week or 10 days.
In January we used thermal imaging gear to capture birds leaving the main Kowhai colony on their way back to sea. This short clip was taken from near the Mt Fyffe Hut, just before daylight on 25th January. The birds continued at about this density for about 40 minutes.
Each white dot, however faint, is a shearwater flying out to sea. The faintest ones are about 400m away. Best viewed at full screen.
Roughly a hundred birds on screen continuously for just over half an hour.
