Tui attack

Tui are at their noisiest in springtime with lots of territorial aggression and mating behaviour. At times a single tui will blunder into another's patch and is immediately chased off with much flapping of wings. Tui will take on kaka and kereru to protect their food source and with the native fuchsia flowering at present, there's a lot of tui around.

Tui on kowhai - taken when I lived in town

An island tui in the flowering cherry tree

An unforgettable experience for me is being in the middle of a tui raid; flocks of 50-100 birds decide to attack a good food source knowing that there is safety in numbers. Just the sound of furious wing flapping - and sometimes the mewling of the tui whose patch they are raiding as it futilely tries to protect its nectar source. I had my camera out ready and waiting when it last happened to me but as soon as I pressed 'record' a message came up with 'insufficient space on the memory card'! Rats!!

Other birds are also active; the kereru are back out of the bush and feeding on the flowering broom and fresh leaf growth. I want to get rid of the broom but love seeing these large birds balancing on the thin branches. I do have to watch out when working outside as sometimes the kereru fly low and fast not far from me! Flocks of kakariki fly overhead and I heard the first pīpīwharauroa (shining cuckoo) of the season on 25 October - it's flown all the way from the Solomon Islands to mate and lay eggs that other birds (generally grey warblers and brown creepers) will raise. The most common bird heard around home is the korimako (bellbird), possibly because I don't have many fuchsia trees here which bring the tui.

I didn't realise the influence that territories have on bird distribution; in town you put out some bird seed and sparrows, blackbirds, gulls, mynahs and starlings all fly in and seem to co-exist. I don't feed the birds here but I think the birds would be less tolerant of sharing their territory with others.

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