Dark skies to help seabirds avoid crash landings

Nicole Mathewson Reporter from The Press

By David Hill, Local Democracy Reporter

Turning down the lights will give Kaikōura’s Hutton’s shearwater birds ‘‘a fighting chance’’ from at least one of the multiple threats they face, says a local wildlife advocate.

Kaikōura Wildlife Centre Trust project co-ordinator Sabrina Luecht said the birds can starve due to scant food in the sea, suffer attacks by cats and dogs, or be disoriented by artificial lighting.

DarkSky International granted international dark sky sanctuary status to the Kaikōura district last month and new lighting rules are expected to become operative in the Kaikōura District Plan by the end of the year.

One motivation for the dark skies project was protecting the endangered Hutton’s shearwater birds / tītī from the detrimental effects of artificial lighting, which led to some birds crash landing in the town.

‘‘With the dark skies, it will reduce crash landings considerably with the lighting changes, we just need to get the State Highway 1 lights changed on Beach Road,’’ Luecht said.

‘‘But birds will still crash land and then they get attacked by cats or dogs and then there is human intervention.

‘‘If we can stop some of those pet attacks, we will improve the odds of the birds surviving.’’

It needed more responsible pet ownership, keeping pets indoors and getting them desexed, she said.

Over the last few years she has noticed growing numbers of rescued birds and wildlife, including tītī, are in poor condition due to starvation.

‘‘We can’t address the starvation effects straight away, but we can treat the poor body condition which leads to crash landings and dog attacks.’’

She said an adult bird typically weighed about 350 grams, but rescued birds could weigh as little as 130 grams.

It meant rehabilitating birds to a survival weight before returning them to the wild.

Hutton’s Shearwater Charitable Trust chairperson Ted Howard has been feeding ‘‘sardine smoothies’’ to tītī to supplement feed chicks at Te Rae o Atiu colony on Kaikōura Peninsula to give them the best chance at survival.

While last season was the most successful for breeding in the peninsula colony, with 27 chicks hatching, global warming is taking its toll, with rising ocean temperatures forcing krill, the birds’ staple diet, to go deeper for cooler temperatures, he said.

During a two week period last season the adult tītī were unable to bring back enough food to feed their chicks.

The tītī began returning to the peninsula colony and to the two remaining colonies in the Kaikōura Seaward mountain ranges last month, ready for the new breeding season.

■ If you find an injured shearwater keep it safe overnight in a box and take it to Vet Care Kaikōura or Project WellBird, contact: kaikourawildlifecentre.org/huttonsshearwater.
Healthy birds can be taken to Dolphin Encounter, 96 Esplanade. Find out more at: huttonsshearwater.org.nz.

■ LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.