Godwit watcher in for the long haul

Working for two months in damp, freezing conditions to monitor birds would not be everyone's idea of a good time, but for Marlborough Sounds-based ornithologist Rob Schuckard it was a dream come true.

Schuckard has just returned from spending two months volunteering in the Alaskan Tundra next to the Bering Sea for the United States Geological Survey.

The trip was partially funded by the US Government for bird flu surveillance, and Schuckard's tasks included catching and taking samples for signs of bird flu from Arctic migrants the red knot and the bar-tailed godwit.

He also helped monitor the endangered spectacled eider duck, whose habitat is at risk from the expansion of oil drilling in the Bering Sea.

He was with a core group of four, camping in the Yukon Kuskokwim Refuge, a reserve slightly smaller than the North Island, here the bar-tailed godwits breed.

The 77,000km wildlife refuge has the highest density and diversity of breeding shorebirds in the Americas.

Schuckard is a member of the New Zealand Ornithological Society and has worked with the US Geological Survey around New Zealand, including in the Nelson region, on groundbreaking research fitting bar-tailed godwits with satellite trackers.

Such research has confirmed the small birds cover the 12,000km from Alaska to New Zealand non-stop, over seven to nine days. These champion commuters return to Alaska at the end of the New Zealand summer via Asia, completing a staggering 28,000km round trip.

Sadly, the population of bar-tailed godwits is in steep decline, dropping from about 155,000 in the 1990s to an estimated 90,000 today.

Schuckard said seeing and hearing the courtship activities of godwits on the breeding grounds, with their noisy aerial displays, was incredible.

"To be lying in my tent in the middle of the night in the middle of all the things we'd heard about was absolutely amazing."

While it was great to be in Alaska, it was also hard work.

With the tundra thawing around them, their campsite was sometimes flooded and they were working in damp and very cold conditions.

"It's just one big soggy place over there."

He arrived in Alaska on April 24, when temperatures were well below 0degC, in time to see flocks of godwits arrive.

The first godwits were seen on May 7, with up to 300 birds passing through daily.

It was a particular buzz to see a bird bearing a colour band to show it had been marked in New Zealand, he said. While the godwits arrived in big groups, they spread out to breed, with only one godwit nest per 1.5km.

Schuckard said it was extremely difficult to locate the godwits nests, which are at ground level among the lichen.

The only way to find the nests is to spend painstaking hours watching the birds, in the hope of catching them change over from sitting on the nests. Many nests on the tundra failed because of predation from foxes, sandhill cranes, skuas and mink.

While most godwits are in Alaska at this time of the year, adolescents - those up to three years old - can be seen in the Nelson winter at Farewell Spit, the Motueka sandspit, the Waimea Inlet and other tidal areas.

- © Fairfax NZ News