Annette Taylor: Birdwatchers deserve our gratitude

Birds matter. Just look at what happened when Radio New Zealand proposed taking the birdcall off Morning Report, and called for feedback. Emails flooded in from all around; listeners opposed to dropping the calls outnumbered those in favour 1000 to one.

We're a small, remote country and we don't have as many birds as continental areas, where bird-watching is often treated as a sport, with people competing to amass the biggest lists of rarities. In North America, you're nobody if you don't have a himalayan snowcock or a plain chachalaca on your list.

Here, the birding fraternity is much more interested in compiling information on the birds themselves. And they tend not to wear anoraks.

Over Queen's Birthday weekend they'll be converging on Hamilton for the annual Ornithological Society conference to renew old acquaintances and share knowledge.

Papers will range from trying to explain why tui are not resident in Hamilton to describing what rats do to birds on islands - and what humans do to them.

So why does all this matter?

Birdwatching is sometimes compared to train-spotting. But unlike trains, which run on well-defined timetables, much of what birds do is still completely unknown. Everything we do know has been discovered by hours of patient, careful observation.

And as with everything in nature, nothing to do with birds remains static. Changes in bird populations can indicate wider changes in the environment. Mass wrecks of seabirds may give an early warning that something is amiss in the marine environment, for example.

Ornithology is one discipline where there's definitely a place for amateurs to make significant contributions.

Throughout New Zealand there are 17 regional branches of the Ornithological Society. The Waikato has an active and enthusiastic group, from librarians to dairy farmers, who meet monthly and carry out activities from counting waders on the west coast harbours to banding grey-faced petrels at Mt Maunganui.

Patrols to check for beached seabirds are another regular activity. It may not sound as appealing as looking for live birds, but it's a great excuse to walk down a wild and windy beach.

All this work is voluntary, and provides valuable insights into the natural world. The largest project the society has been involved with recently is the bird atlas scheme, a summary of which will be presented at the conference.

The country was divided into 10km squares and the bird populations in as many of these as possible were recorded, with notes on seasonal variations, habitat choice and breeding activity. More than 1000 contributors have sent in over 32,000 data sheets.

The last time such a study was done was more than 20 years ago, and bird populations are changing all the time. Some, like the raucous spur-winged plover, have spread dramatically. Others, such as yellowheads and brown kiwi, have declined further.

One species whose long-term decline has been reversed by recent human intervention is the grey-faced petrel (or northern muttonbird).

The Ornithological Society's work at the Mount has shown that this popular holiday area has one of the largest mainland colonies of these birds, but that their breeding success is much lower than on predator-free islands.

This has given the impetus for predator control, which has increased their fledging rate and improved the lot of other species in the reserve, such as little blue penguins.

For the past 15 years this project has largely been overseen by Hugh Clifford from his home base in Hamilton. Clifford and other society members spend about 25 nights of the year clambering over the slopes of the Mount when the petrels return to their burrows. More than 6000 have been captured and banded over that time.
These birds, which used to breed all around the northern North Island coastline, can live up to 40 years.

"They lay only one egg a year, rather than nine or 10 like sparrows. This makes them hugely vulnerable to predation by rats, stoats and ferrets," says Clifford.

Ornithology matters, because birds matter. If we don't keep an eye out on the tui and grey-faced petrels, we may find we only have sparrows to watch.

* Annette Taylor contributes occasionally to Stevenson's Country.