Newsletter #104
Top image: The Ridge | Tom Rae
Tēnā koutou katoa,
BRaid’s Annual General Meeting will be at 1.00pm Friday 07 November at the Department of Conservation 31 Ngai Mahi Rd. Sockburn. It will be followed by a General Meeting at 2pm. All are welcome; you do not need to be a member to attend these meetings. Minutes from past meetings and the agendas for the next meetings are here:
- Agenda AGM 07 November 2025
- Minutes AGM 27 September 2024
- Agenda GM 07 November 2025
- Minutes GM 28 February 2025
Congratulations on the winner of this year’s years Bird of the Year competition, kārearea New Zealand falcon. While the wrybill didn’t win, thanks to the magnificent campaigning efforts by so many people, it placed 17th in a field of 73 birds, with 6,575 votes out if a total 75,000 votes cast. You can read more about it on page 3 of the October 2 edition of the North Canterbury News (you’ll need to go to ‘back issues’ in the top left of the screen).
Congratulations also to Tom Rae who won one of the biggest photography award for the second year running, for his extraordinary photo ‘The Ridge’ at the top of this page. Because this news page automatically formats the top image to a rectangle, whereas the original is a square, I encourage you to check out Tom’s website. Hopefully, most of you will immediately identify the location (hint: the Tasman river is on the left).
Finally, I felt compelled to share another holiday photo that I took in Western Australia a few weeks ago, of the moment a black-fronted dotterel happily foraging along the shore realised that the object ahead of it wasn’t a log. It gingerly (yes, ‘gingerly’) backed away…in the direction of three more much larger freshwater crocs sunbathing a few metres away. What wading birds have to deal with in Aus!
Ngā mihi,
Sonny Whitelaw
manager@braid.org.nz
Bird surveys
Orari River Bird Survey: November 1st. Meeting 8.30am at the Upper Orari Bridge car park off SH79. 1461568E 5121805N – usual place and time (see map below). If you’re not familiar with the river we can pair you with people who are… hopefully. Sections are about 7km along the riverbed/fairway It takes about 1/2 a day. Many of us will be leaving our vehicles to be picked up by the following team etc. Sometimes the spare keys can be useful! Postponement date is the following weekend, Nov 8th.
Contact: Tony on 027 281 0106 tadoy00@gmail.com if you’re thinking of joining us.
Please bring:
- suitable clothing (and have a spare change in the car)
- sunscreen
- sunhat/beanie
- binoculars and a pen
- sturdy footwear
- food and liquid
News/articles
- University of Canterbury: PhD Scholarship! The scholarship supports braided river bird conservation research by supporting a student to undertake a research doctoral degree in the School of Biological Sciences at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury
- World Meteorological Organisation: State of Global Water Resources 2024 (published Sept, 2025); takeaway messages:
• Highlights cascading impacts of too much or too little water
• Only one third of river basins had normal conditions in 2024
• All glacier regions worldwide report losses due to melt for third straight year
• Report calls for more monitoring and data sharing - Nature: Metagraph ‘Google for DNA’ “The Internet has Google. Now biology has MetaGraph [which] compresses vast data archives into a search engine for scientists, opening up new frontiers of biological discovery.”
-
One News: New data reveals widespread contamination in New Zealand’s waterways
-
North Canterbury News, Letters to the Editor page 6, October 2 edition. Dr Tim Kelly calls out misinformation regarding nitrates in waterways, and the impact those nitrates are also having on the life in those rivers.
- The Flock! Pest Free Waimakariri, Waimakariri District Council, Waimakariri Biodiversity Trust and Ashley Rakahuri Rivercare Group welcomed the arrival of braided river birds in September. If you would like to welcome the birds back to your river, you can download from the BRaid website all the information you need, high resolutions signs and graphics, and templates for kids and adults to make the birds. Corflute used in election billboards and real estate signs is an excellent material to create the cut-out birds.
