It’s easy to see why the Motueka Sandspit is wildlife photographer Rebecca Bowater’s favorite birding spot.
A three-kilometer hike up the spit at this time of year is rewarded with the sight of at least 3,000 bar-tailed godwits circling in cloud before landing.
The wading birds are about to embark on an epic migration to Alaska, stopping to feed in the Yellow Sea region between China and the Korean Peninsula on their way to their breeding grounds, said Bowater.
On their way back to New Zealand, around September, they fly straight – one bird in 2020 setting a non-stop distance record for migrating birds over 12,000 kilometres, over nine days, from Alaska to the Firth of Thames (overtaken by a barge that flew 13,000 km non-stop from Alaska to Tasmania last year).
LEARN MORE:
* The first barges of the season arrive in Christchurch
* Honda shifts gears announcing new service center in Stoke
* Godwits begin their annual migration to Alaska from Foxton Beach
Martin De Ruyter / Stuff
Rebecca Bowater photographs Band-tailed Godwits at the Motueka Sandspit, before the bird migration from New Zealand to Alaska.
The birds came back leaner and “quite scruffy” from their marathon migration, Bowater said.
Leaving for Alaska in late summer from the Antipodes, they “plumped up”, the males looking particularly “lovely” in their tan breeding colors.
“I could stare at them for hours,” she said.
Supplied/Rebecca Bowater
Image of a Band-tailed Godwit captured at Motueka Sandspit by wildlife photographer Rebecca Bowater.
The Nelson retiree first turned to birds in 2008. She said the Motueka Sandspit was her favorite spot because it was so close, and the barge was home to a variety of birds, including two oystercatcher species.
Growing up with a botanist father, learning the botanical names of New Zealand flora on bums with her father, she decided in 2000 to “photograph what she knew” – mainly plants on mountain tops – and continued to produce a book on mountaineering. flora, and later on fungi too.
But when Bowater had cancer in 2008 and had to stop climbing mountains, she turned to bird photography near her home in the coastal suburb of Nelson, Atawhai.
Supplied/Rebecca Bowater
Wildlife photographer Rebecca Bowater captures this image of band-tailed godwits at the Motueka Sandspit, where several thousand can be found in late February before migrating about 12,000 km to breed in Alaska.
She did not then know the names of the different gulls or terns. And she soon met someone on Boulder Bank from a birding group who “showed me my first barge through his telescope”.
She was surprised that she hadn’t noticed the birds before.
Martin De Ruyter / Stuff
Several thousand band-tailed godwits congregate at the Motueka Sandspit in February, just before their annual migration to Alaska.
Bowater joined the Nelson Birds New Zealand group, got a long lens and was still learning about birds, she said.
“I photograph all kinds of birds all the time. Especially seabirds, because they’re around here, or on the spit.
She had just returned from a trip to Golden Bay, photographing godwits, oystercatchers, cormorants, terns and ‘all kinds’ of birds on Pakawau beach – adding the photos to her collection on the website, flickr , to share with nature lovers around the world.
Supplied/Rebecca Bowater
Band-tailed Godwits at the Motueka Sandspit, photographed by Nelson-based nature enthusiast Rebecca Bowater.
During the fall she could be found foraging for mushrooms at Nelson’s Brook Waimarama Sanctuary and places like Pelorous Bridge and the West Coast, and was about to publish a third edition of her book on New Zealand mushrooms.
“Every season I find mushrooms that I have never seen before.
“You have no idea what you’re going to find.”
During the summer months, she would travel to the ski slopes and places like Arthurs Pass, to capture flowering alpine plants on film.
Martin De Ruyter / Stuff
Nelson-based wildlife photographer Rebecca Bowater photographs Band-tailed Godwits on the Motueka Sand Spit before they migrate to their breeding grounds, about 12,000 km away, in Alaska.
Bowater would photograph “some kind of nature” for the rest of her life, she said.
“I love all of nature.
“I love being there.”