The Great Matuku Muster November 2024
Wendy from the Love Bittern Project travels and meets with individuals and community groups, providing them with on the ground support, information and resources to raise awareness, monitor and record Australasian bittern.
The Community Nursery hosted Wendy on Sunday 17 November 24 for a talk with 15 people attending and this was followed by a field trip at dusk to Bushy Point overlooking the estuary to listen for matuku/bittern booming. On the Saturday morning she had been out with Pete McClelland to Big Lagoon.
The talk focused on the nesting, breeding and feeding requirements for bittern, ie their ideal habitat and the plight of this bird in New Zealand (due to that wetland habitat being lost or degraded). Wendy had travelled the length and breadth of the country, spreading the message, imparting information and enthusing communities.
Unfortunately, we didn’t hear bittern that night but we are now much more equipped to search for this elusive bird and record any sightings in the future.
We did later manage to see a matuku in our paddock, but it was super-sized! A massive bittern, next to the Education Centre designed by Barry Smith, who with Ray, mowed a brilliant lifelike bittern into our paddock – only seen from the air, so friends Beatty and later Daniel managed to get a photo from the Stewart Island plane as they flew over our place recently.
You can read all about the project at https://lovebittern.com/ and thanks to Catriona Gower at Environment Southland for organising these events for Wendy in Southland.
Chris
Posted: 2 December 2024