Donna Field - Where have the Gulls gone?

Usually this time of the year our Ashburton Bridge would be inundated with nesting Black Billed Gulls. However this year there's none to be seen! Luke was keen to flock to the facts with gull expert Donna Field from Environment Canterbury

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now you know how we like to tackle the big
issues on the show. One has come from good buddy
Adam who lives over in Timold. Last week he said
to me, hey, Loke, have you noticed this year that
there's no gals nesting around the Ashburton Riverbridge? And I
hadn't really noticed because I live on the north side.
So I've made a point over the past week of
taking a drive over. Was no sure on the weekends

(00:23):
to go and play a bit of golf at the
at the Timble course. Jesus got dry, hasn't it, But yeah,
sure enough in probably six excursions I've made to the
south side of town, sure enough, no sign of the gals.
What's going on to help pull us in Donna Field
is from Environment Canterbury and we started with a bit
of a lowdown on these black build.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Gals now only found in New Zealand, so that endemic
the one of three of our native gulls. The other
one the big black back gal that you often see
flying around, and then the red build gal which is
the one you often see scale. And that's one of
the differences of the Tarapoka poker or the black build

(01:05):
goal isn't really a scavenger, so you're less likely to
see it around your fish and chips.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
The fish and chips are safe yet.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Well, yeah, safer than with the red build goals anyway,
sadly to say they are one of the most threshing
goals in the world, Like.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
I've heard that, but I struggle to believe it because
in previous years, around about this time you drive across
the Ashburton Bridge and they're everywhere. There's what feels like
thousands of them parked up. Yeah, it's such a scene
from an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
They are a bit like they've imagine how Harvey Norman
felt when they're all on their roofs. But even that's
saying that. You know, you sort of think because we've
had colonies of three thousand that the Esperson River Bridge.
But there's only sort of seventy thousand birds in New
Zealand is what we estimate, And that sounds a lot

(01:59):
of birds. But considering that there's been a huge decline
from two hundred thousand just sort of basically in the
last eight years down to that number, people are really
worried about what's happening with them. Like many of our
species yea.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
So that includes that Donner. So I'm wondering whether or
not they've moved on by design, because there was a
bit of talk a couple of months back about how
they were trying to move the gals away from what's
going to be a construction site soon as we put
in the second bridge. So I asked a donner, is
that the case.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
I don't think it is by design that they're not there.
I think it's probably their choice because we've improved so previously.
We've improved the islands around the State Highway bridge to
help them, particularly make them a bit higher or one
of the biggest problems is that they get covered with
education and then there's they like clear gravel to nest on,

(02:54):
so sometimes we'll just clear them. So this year use
because of the bridge, a combined CAN and NZTA got
to work clearing some of the vegetation off both big
gravel banks and have been waiting in anticipation, and not
one bird is right, not one well, not one gal.

(03:15):
We've got some we've got some New Zealand oyster catchers
there and we've had some turns, some of our black
skid of turns circling around so there are some birds,
but not the colonies that we so often see as
those black build goals.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
If you're a regular commuter across the Ashburton River Bridge,
you may have noticed that things are a little quieter
than we would usually expect to this time of the year.
There'd usually be thousands of these black built gulls hanging around.
Donna Field is our experts from Environment Canterbury, and it
turns out that she hasn't been able to find them
that no.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
And you know, I've been looking at all the river
mouse on the one fill outdoor access cameras to see
if I can see them down there. Really haven't really
been able to walk delivers so much to see if
we can find them. For birds on the rivers because
of all the flood they will try nesting up to
three times, but it becomes hard work, I think for them,

(04:07):
and so it's often we've had the occasional year we've
disappeared into people's shingle pits or irrigation pond. It's highly
likely that they are tucked away on somebody's place and
just ready. For the statistics of knowing how many birds
are around this year, it would be useful if people

(04:28):
could let us know if.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Faceting, Well, why is it important that we know where
these gals have gone?

Speaker 2 (04:34):
It's maybe not so important. We love gone though that
does give us an idea of how they work, you know,
like the are they having changing breeding habits because of
changes that we're doing. But it's particularly useful for a
consensus for the population, so we can see whether it's
trending flat down or up.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
So if we do want to help you out and
keep an eye out for our black build gal friends,
I can't say if you ever been that close to one.
So what makes them distinctive? What do they look like?

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Right? Well, I was thinking about that's how do you
describe them? Because you know, they're not that different to
our other small goal, the red bill goal. But what
they have is they're quite a fine They're quite slender,
the eyes white with quite distinct ring around it. So
and then they have this sort of like their black

(05:26):
tail is quite quite that has these white spots on it,
and they had a particularly black beak quite quite. Yeah,
But generally they'll be inland or in the river beds,
not around the town so much. It's ket On Harvey Norman, Yes.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
But Harvey Norman. How interesting. If anything, the mystery thickens,
so I certainly hope there's some listeners out there that
can help track down our Black Build friends. And for now,
I guess those who freshly cleans their car or are
a little nervous driving across the bridge, well they can
breath the sigh of relief as things are a little
more vacant than they otherwise would be. It's been a

(06:04):
really fascinating chat. Thank you so much for filling us
in Dona Field from Ken.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Thanks very much for your time, Lucan for putting the
word out there, not on the plague but the pleasure
of the Black Build gu