11 days to go before WQ hits the road running

After Brent Stephenson's thought provoking (not to mention mouthwatering) page on the waders of New Zealand, it left me thinking about the Black Stilt. 20 years of conservation effort have gone into helping this bird and it is still just about hanging on by a thread and is even more rare than the spoonie. Of course we'll be looking for it when we visit NZ early next year, but seeing one will be tinged with a bit of sadness knowing that this was once a fairly common bird, the same old story of where humanity goes, the wildlife suffers.Now is the time for us to be doing something about this, not leaving it until it is too late. We hope too to visit the project and see how things are going.

Black Stilt

Here is a link with some good news for the Black Stilt aka Kakῑ: http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/black-stilt012.html#cr

Here is a Birdlife International fact sheet about the species: http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=3103

Here is an ARKive page: http://www.arkive.org/new-zealand-black-stilt/himantopus-novaezelandiae/

Also see: https://sites.google.com/site/braidedriveraid/wildlife/birds/black-stilt