[megan]

Robin Search, Saturday 24th September

Over the last 3years there has been 66 North Island Robins released in the East Harbour Regional Park by the volunteer group MIRO. A comprehensive search is planned for the 24th September to see how many robins can be found (providing important information) and they are looking for volunteers.

The terrain won’t be excessively difficult but the search area will include suitable robin habitat which is in the lower reaches of gullies without tracks and that aren’t marked. Mostly you won’t be moving more than 100m from the stream. Volunteers must have sufficient bushcraft skills to be confident searching off the main tracks. You will be well briefed prior to the search and will be shown where you have been allocated to search.

If you are interested in helping please contact Owen Spearpoint at by Monday 19th September.

[harry]

And a very enjoyable day it was, too. Unfortunately the team I was in didn’t find any robins, and nor did any of the other teams.

The organisers of the search reported back as follows:

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Thanks very much for giving up your time to help MIRO search the East Harbour Forest Block for robins last Saturday. We really appreciate it. The number of people involved meant we had comprehensive coverage of the likely robin habitats south of Mt Lowry. Thats the good news.

The bad news is that not one of us saw a robin. This was somewhat surprising, given the thoroughness of the search and the fact that we have been having regular, credible sightings until very recently. There are two obvious explanations. One, the most likely, is that the conditions on the day were simply not suitable for the robins to react to us. Robins can be cryptic and this has happened to us before with known birds in the park, where on some days they readily make an appearance and on others they don’t appear, for reasons we don’t understand.

A more pessimistic explanation is that the recent three days of snow and hail was too much for them and that the birds have died. While this is possible, we also know that North Island Robins can handle snow in other parts of the country (althiough the birds released from Kapiti would not be used to such cold weather). However, some areas of the park are more sheltered than others and its a bit of a stretch, though not impossible, that the entire population was wiped out.

As it is likely that there are still robins in the park, despite the results of the search, we will continue to look for them on a less structured basis. We invite anyone who is in the park over the coming months to be on the lookout and to use the techniques from last Saturday to call them in. If you make a sighting, please let me know about it, preferably with banding details if present.
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The search was organised by MIRO, a volunteer group doing conservation work in the East Harbour Regional Park in the hills behind Eastbourne (pest control, bird monitoring, etc). If you’re interested in what they are doing you can check out their website – http://www.miro.org.nz

– Harry

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