An award-winning photo by Roger Smith featuring a hidden dotterel next to a tyre track.
An award-winning photo by Roger Smith featuring a hidden dotterel next to a tyre track.
Nature’s best
Photographer Roger Smith, from Waikanae Beach, is one of the winners in The Nature Conservancy’s 2024 Oceania Nature Photo Contest.
Nearly 400 entries came from New Zealand and 1220 from Australia for the competition, which highlights the unique biodiversity of Oceania. Papua New Guinea submitted 238 entries and 40 entries came from the Solomon Islands.
Smith won the New Zealand People and Nature section with a shot of a rare dotterel nesting precariously close to a tyre track in the sand.
The photo was taken at the Waikanae river estuary before there was a complete ban on motor vehicles there.
“While photographing birds nesting there, I watched in horror as a white ute sped across the dunes directly towards where I knew there was a nesting banded dotterel.
“Fearing the worst, I sprinted after it, getting at the nest about a minute after the ute had passed close by.
“I was amazed to see that the parent bird had remained on the nest as the ute passed about half a metre away.
“My photo shows the bird on its nest under the driftwood twigs and the tracks of the ute.”
Kāpiti Service Centre move
The Ministry of Social Development’s Kāpiti Work and Income Service Centre in Paraparaumu will close temporarily from Wednesday, January 22, at 5pm while it relocates to a new site.
The interior design of the new office, at Shop 915 Coastlands Shopping Centre (between Animates and KFC), will provide a more welcoming space for visitors, improved privacy for clients working with case managers and better security for visitors and staff.
“We’re looking forward to opening our new Kāpiti Service Centre,” MSD Wellington regional commissioner Gagau Annandale-Stone said.
Clients will still be able to access services while the current site is closed, via MyMSD, the Work and Income website, or by calling 0800 559 009.
Scheduled appointments will receive a phone service. If people need to speak with someone local, they can call the Work and Income 0800 number to book a phone appointment.
“We are pleased to be able to bring these improvements to Kāpiti,” Annandale-Stone said.
The new Kāpiti Service Centre will open to the public at 9.30am on Wednesday, January 29.
Paraparaumu RSA says the sudden closure of Kāpiti’s only district weekly newspaper, the Kāpiti News, will be a major loss for voluntary and business organisations which depend on local newspaper print coverage for reaching in their communities.
RSA president Karen Wemyss says many Kāpiti organisations have ageing memberships which don’t easily adapt to a strengthening shift from print to digital communication systems.
“We will miss the strong community spirit of the Kāpiti News and the care the editor and his staff take in helping organisations like ours to get our messages across within our own community’, and to the veterans we support.”
Worthy recipient
Annette Buckley, from Paraparaumu, is a recipient of one four Companion Animals NZ Awards(Te Tohu Maimoa).
Buckley founded Felix Fix which encourages people to desex their pets.
“We’re approaching ‘fix’ number 800 and extended our reach beyond Kāpiti and are now a registered charity.”
Annette Buckley with cat Ronnie.
Local RSA reaches out at Xmas
More than 50 elderly widows and widowers of those who served, or were married to veterans, attended Paraparaumu RSA’s annual Xmas party including 101-year-old Neville Sandiford, survivor of a bomber crash in WWII.
Sandiford of Paraparaumu swims every day plays croquet three times a week, and walks and drives everywhere.
He is the oldest surviving member of the RSA’s 860 members and RSA president Karen Wemyss says the applause he received reflected the esteem he is held in.
She paid tribute to the many RSA members and Club Vista staff who “volunteered at a crazy time of the year when we all come under many pressures” to make sure the contributions made by those who have served and their loved ones was recognised.
