Like white herons, royal spoonbills are widespread in Australia. Only six spoonbill sightings were recorded in New Zealand prior to 1930. Since 1942, according to Oliver, birds have been seen every year and seem to have started breeding here from at least the 1950s. In the summer of 1949–50 a single pair of spoonbills bred alongside the white herons at Okarito. In the following years others joined them, building up the colony to a peak by 1970. Through the 1970s little nesting occurred although spoonbills were present each spring. In the 1980s there have usually been a dozen or more nests but very limited success in fledging chicks. The Okarito spoonbills build their nests in the exposed canopy of the tallest kahikatea trees and regularly lose all their eggs or chicks in storms. They have extended their range and now breed in a number of other places and numbers seem to be increasing every year.
At the end of the breeding season the spoonbills depart from Okarito but may be seen on the estuary of the Manawatu River where a fair number of them seem to gather for the winter. There are also very many to be seen at Maketu and occasionally on Ohiwa Harbour in the eastern Bay of Plenty. Indeed, I have watched a spoonbill feeding in the estuary of the Whakatane river while having lunch in one of the cafes on the waterfront there.
The spoonbill feeds on insects, shellfish, small fish and frogs. They are readily identified in the distance by the way they feed, walking and sweeping their spoon bill in an arc.
They were known to the Maori as kotuku ngutu papa, the board billed kotuku, so must have been visitors to New Zealand before European recordings.
Wairarapa, 2005
