40 Boffa Miskell Ltd | Waihi North Project | Terrestrial Ecology Values and Effects of the WUG | 22 June 2022 5.6 Native Bird Values 5.6.1 Desktop Assessment New Zealand Bird Atlas records for grids AG76 and AH77 (that include the Willows Road property and part of the Wharekirauponga catchment area) comprises 8.79 and 15.83 person hours of survey respectively. These surveys recorded 41 bird species (excluding coastal species which were not relevant) recorded in primarily rural areas. Twenty one of the 41 species listed were native, and all but two (kākā, At Risk - Recovering and Australasian coot, Naturally Uncommon) are classified as Not Threatened. The bird survey data recorded in the NZ Bird Atlas reflects the low survey effort and bias towards rural / urban areas, rather than the forest. Bird species recorded in the SNA report for Waihi ED included bellbird / korimako, tūī and NZ pigeon / kererū, all of which were described as being “common”. Kākā and North Island kiwi (Kessels & Associates, 2010) were described as occasional, and potentially persisting in low numbers in Waihi ED, respectively. The desktop assessment also included review information from previous surveys carried out using two methods; five-minute bird counts (5MBCs – 26 sites) and acoustic recording devices (ARDs – 14 sites) carried out at the same sites in January – February 2019 and November – December 2020 (BML 2019b, 2022 (in preparation)). Two ARDs were deployed in response to a reported kiwi call in April 2019, no kiwi were recorded on the ARDs over two weeks. Incidental observations of other bird species of interest were also made when field teams were undertaking other monitoring or moving around the site. Twenty-four species of bird were recorded (16 native, 8 exotic), including common forest birds such as tomtit / miromiro, ruru, kererū, tui and bellbird / korimako (Table 10). Kākā were also heard incidentally throughout the site although not captured during formal surveys or on acoustic recorders. The birds recorded are considered locally abundant for the CFP, and within the ED (Kessels & Associates, 2010). Species of note observed during 2019 and 2020 surveys include the whitehead / pōpokatea21, yellow-crowned kākāriki and kākā. These species are classified as At Risk (Robertson et. al. 2021). 21 In the 2021 threat classification series, whitehead / pōpokatea was moved out of the ‘At Risk’ category to ‘Not Threatened’ but with the qualifier of ‘Conservation Dependent’
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