Photo shows "Big Stumpy" patrolling Tutukaka's inner harbour, near the Game Fishing Club. His tail is unnaturally short, probably because the sting ray was caught by a fisherman in younger life and his tail damaged by the hook.


We are back in Tutukaka for a week or so before heading off on two wheels again.
There are still a few penguins around, but not as many as before when the breeding season was in swing, so the nights are quiet, apart from sporadic calls from morepork owls and the odd kiwi call. At high tide, when the inner marina is a little clearer and cleaner, short-tailed sting rays have been making their rounds. One of us saw 7 yesterday, right inside the marina, including two that were over a metre wide from one wing tip to the other.

That's not that big according to someone who was watching one of the stingrays. They can reach 4 metres in width - bigger than the manta rays we saw plenty of in the Marquesas last year, but not as attractive.
We've often speculated why sting rays come into the marina. It's not just here, as we saw sting rays in the Coromandel's Whitianga marina when we were last holed up there.

The guy we were talking to who recognises two particular local sting rays, nicknamed "Big Stumpy" and "Little Stumpy" because of their unnaturally shortened tails, thinks it's because they are hiding from orcas (NZ orcas feed almost exclusively on sting rays in shallow coastal water). We suspect it's a bit more mundane than that - they're here because they are attracted to fish offal and scraps thrown into the marina from fishermen.

Easy Come Easy Go?



Photo shows the Sugarloaf - an andesitic rocky outcrop 9 miles from the entrance to Tutukaka Harbour. The white blobs are nesting gannets, with one in flight at top left.

We thought we were pretty smart sailing across the Pacific, but there are smarter creatures than us. Millions of birds migrate every year between various parts around the Pacific to New Zealand's coasts every year. In fact, most make the journey twice a year, every year!

This is the time for migrant birds to arrive and feed up in the Southern hemisphere summer and breed, if that's what they do. On leaving Whangarei Heads on the way back to Tutukaka we came across tens of thousands of shearwaters looking for food off the shore. They are also called mutton birds, because in the past they were eaten. There are several different species. A few spend all of their time down here, but most migrate to the Northern hemisphere during the Southern winter. Buller's shearwaters nest in the hundreds of thousands, previously millions, in the Poor Knights islands off Tutukaka, sharing their burrows with rather morose tuatara. They fly every year right across the Pacific to the NW coast of the U.S. and Canada!



Buller's shearwater

There are even more remarkable journeys. Sugarloaf, a volcanic rock stack 9 miles off the Tutukaka coast, and the Pinnacles, are breeding home to thousands of Australasian gannets. We sailed in rather lumpy seas with a dying southerly to the Sugarloaf a couple of days ago. At first, all we could see was lumps of whitish rock. Soon we saw that every scrap of possible landing spot was occupied by a gannet nest. The Pinnacles were the same. 12 years ago we saw a bunch of lazy fur seals out here on the one single possible haul out spot on these precipitous islands, but there were none today. Perhaps they are heading down to the nearest breeding colony nearer Wellington.

Young gannets, once they have fledged, fly direct to the Australian coast without stopping. It's a route many young human kiwis take, but not so young as these birds and they certainly don't fly under their own steam! Most of the gannets come back after a few years of life in Oz but what makes them go there in the first place and what makes them come back?



Australasian gannet

Thousands of bar-tailed godwits are also arriving if they haven't already done so. They aim mainly for the muddy, shellfish rich waters of the Thames estuary and the large harbours, like the Manukau and Kaipara. These are waders and are part of a large armada of birds that regularly migrate between the two hemispheres, alternating as they go to keep feeding in the best months of the year. We took 9 months to get from Panama to NZ. The godwits fly non-stop from Alaska to New Zealand and Tasmania, a distance even further than ours. In late March, they fly back again! When we sailed over from French Polynesia we were impressed by the early Polynesian migrations that used bush materials ocean going catamarans and pandanus sails, but the birds knock the socks off any human endeavour.



Bar-tailed godwit