Welcome to Shorebird season 2018

This week I started going out daily as this is around when the eastern curlews arrive back from their long migration from the arctic circle.

For migratory birds no year is a walk in the park but this year has been particularly hard. They leave Australia and refuel around the Yellow Sea but this year it had been a particularly hard winter in the north, with a weather system known as the Beast from the East, causing unprecedented freezing conditions. Clams had frozen and died and so the Miranda Shorebird Centre in New Zealand worked hard to raise funds to buy clams and dump them on the tidal flats around the Yellow Sea to give the starving, exhausted birds a chance to make it up to the breeding grounds.

Add to that hotter and drier than normal summers in the northern hemisphere saw wildfires raging in the arctic circle. For chicks that can't fly, if they were caught up in this then it will mean a sub par breeding season. Terrible news for birds that are critically endangered. Only counts back in the non-breeding grounds will see what effect the dreadful conditions have had.

Last year we were counting 20 - 24 curlews so let's hope we don't see a decline in these numbers as on average these birds have been declining at the rate of 6% a year. Fingers crossed.

Switching to good news, today I recorded our first eastern curlew. We did not have any birds overwintering here so this bird is our first of the season. We still have 25 double-banded plovers looking very pretty in their breeding colours, and looking plump enough to start their migration back to New Zealand for their breeding season.

Add to that this was the evening of the blood moon. So all up a pretty special day.