The actual idea for the Great Matuku Muster – bittern survey 2024 started more than a decade ago with John Sumich dreaming up a drone with a heat detection camera and another drone with a regular camera to spot bittern from the air. He worked with Peter Solaris from X-Craft to get the drone built, with funding from WWF and tested it with Emma Williams, the national bittern expert from DOC at a very cold morning at the Whangamarino wetland. At the time, the technology was too expensive to use. However in the past years drones have come down in price, increased in capability and are now a well used tool to spot bittern, as you can read in this National Geographic article.
We know destruction of wetlands have significantly contributed to the decline of bittern. John Sumich decided to do more than his work as a trustee of Matuku Link with conservation and protection of the Te Henga wetland – he contacted other bittern experts and convinced them to form the Bittern Conservation Trust. To increase bittern numbers by raising the profile of bittern and increase their habitat, a logical first step is to know what the starting point is: how many bittern are there? DOC has a rough estimate of 700 in the whole of New Zealand, but was the first to admit it was an estimate. A Coromandel group has done a bittern survey in 2022, another has been done on the east coast from Mangawhai to Leigh. Other surveys in other areas were done in different times and nobody was coordinating the outcomes.
As bittern are very good long distance flyers, one radio tracked bittern visited 30 wetlands in 20 days, the chance of counting that same bittern many times is high. Because bittern are seldom seen and their booming only heard in spring, the idea was born to do a coordinated bittern survey – counting how many we hear booming – in our areas on the same dates. Three Saturday evenings were chosen (14th September, 19th October and 16th November) and volunteers recruited and trained. The word spread, and before we knew it, several local and regional councils, DOC and many community groups joined in, from Northland to Canterbury and everywhere in between.. Just in the Auckland area there will be over 150 sites monitored during these Saturdays!
We’re all hoping for a clear, windless evening to hear the Matuku boom. It will give us a minimum number of male bittern. And if they are booming at the same spot over all three nights, there might be a reason for it: we hope they have a partner or are nesting. In our area, Auckland Council has offered to use their drone to visit the sites with the highest possible chance of a nest, in the Whatipu and Te Henga wetlands.
So we’re up for a very exciting couple of months – stay tuned for the outcome of the first ever Great Matuku Muster! (and don’t forget to Vote Bittern for Bird of the year).
John Sumich did a presentation for Forest & Bird Waitakere on bittern – view it here. And if you have a wetland near you and want to join in, watch John’s instruction video here.
Best, Annalily van den Broeke and John Sumich
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