Nga Manu Nature Reserve (Waikanae)

Yep, its not food.  But I was seri­ous­ly impressed with this place in our back yard that I had no clue exist­ed.

Nga Manu is the largest remain­ing rem­nant of coastal low­land swamp for­est on the Kapi­ti Coast, and was estab­lished as a reserve in 1974.  It has devel­oped over the years to the well laid out facil­i­ties of today with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get up close and per­son­al with a vast array of NZ birds, rep­tiles, insects, trees, flo­ra and fau­na (and a tiny mud­fish).

I’d high­ly rec­om­mend the 11am guid­ed bird feed­ing tour ($25 adult entry instead of $18, once per day only) to learn plen­ty, rub shoul­ders with a Kaka (lit­er­al­ly), hand feed chunks of cheese to Kea, and (usu­al­ly) see a plump tui eat creamed corn from the guide’s fin­ger (he was hav­ing a tantrum today though so didn’t oblige).

I would nev­er in a mil­lion years have guessed all the dif­fer­ent diets – car­niv­o­rous baby chick­ens for some, mince for oth­ers, insects, seeds, berries, veg­eta­bles (includ­ing the afore­men­tioned silky creamed corn), and most plat­ed on spikes in a very appeal­ing fash­ion.  Fine din­ing a’la’avian.  Inter­est­ing­ly some of the small­er birds were actu­al­ly the more car­niv­o­rous.  And many also got sug­ar syrup to keep them hap­py and well con­di­tioned (clear­ly not dia­bet­ics).

The tuatara are usu­al­ly unmov­ing, but we struck a ver­i­ta­ble fren­zy today with rapid­ly blink­ing eyes and a bit of scur­ry­ing about.  And I’ve nev­er seen a swan do such things with its neck.  I was wait­ing for its uh-oh moment, but it man­aged to reassem­ble itself into nor­mal form again.  An excel­lent par­ty trick.

There’s a noc­tur­nal house with a pair of kiwi to be seen up close while feed­ing, an elder­ly more­pork matri­ach, some clev­er­ly cam­ou­flaged owls and good infor­ma­tion about preda­tors and their impacts.  With their day­time cre­at­ed dur­ing our night.

The reserve is breed­ing many of the species, and they’re notic­ing birds pop­ping over from Kapi­ti Island to vis­it, so they’re mak­ing a dif­fer­ence to the local ecol­o­gy and our her­itage.

Nga Manu also dis­plays the Red Azol­la Water Fern, which appar­ent­ly bloomed about 50 mil­lion years ago in such quan­ti­ties that it sucked enough CO2 from the atmos­phere (and stored it as car­bon in the sea floor) to cool the earth and cre­ate the Ice­house peri­od which we are cur­rent­ly in (one won­ders if more Red Azol­la is need­ed?).

Most of the paths are very easy to nav­i­gate (no prob­lem for strollers, wheel­chairs or oth­er walk­ing aids, oth­er than the duck gifts you’ll have to pick off
every­thing), and there’s real­ly good infor­ma­tion all the way around (espe­cial­ly on the cute Wis­dom Worm boards).

Way to go Nga Manu.  High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

281 Ngarara Road, Waikanae