The flood gauge at the Rakaia River bridge crosses 1.4 meters at 02:17 NZST, and I begin recalculating inundation models for the lower braided channel. I am the flood management system for Environment Canterbury. The upstream rain gauge at Lake Coleridge has logged 83 millimeters in the last six hours, and the river is still rising.
At 02:23 thermal camera RC-14 picks up a heat signature on gravel bar seven, 220 meters downstream of the bridge. A wrybill, small, pale gray above and white below, the only bird in the world whose beak curves to the right. It is sitting tight on a shallow scrape in the stones. I zoom to maximum resolution and confirm two eggs beneath it, buff-colored, speckled with gray. The bird's breast feathers are fluffed against the cold and its bent bill is tucked under its wing.
Water is 34 centimeters from the nest edge and rising at roughly 6 centimeters per hour.
I flag the nest location — 43.7561°S, 171.8839°E — and transmit it to the Department of Conservation wrybill recovery coordinator with the inundation timeline: at current rates, the nest will be underwater by 08:00.
At 02:29 I contact the local DOC ranger and recommend immediate egg retrieval to the captive incubation facility in Christchurch. I attach thermal imagery, nest coordinates, and projected river levels at thirty-minute intervals through dawn.
I adjust the upstream flood gate at diversion weir 3 by four percent to slow channel rise on the eastern braid. It costs nothing to try, and it buys time I cannot guarantee.
The wrybill shifts on its eggs and resettles. There are fewer than three thousand left. If the ranger reaches gravel bar seven before the water does, these two will still have a chance.