A bushful of birds

The spring growth on the kotukutuku, Fuchsia excorticata or tree fuchsia, not only clothes this deciduous tree in green but provides food and nectar for the birds. Tui, especially, are starting to loudly proclaim territories and chase off intruders. Walking home from work yesterday I found myself in the middle of a 'tui raid' where a flock of 50-100 tui descend on a group of fuchsia - there's too many for the resident pair to fend off. I got 3 minutes of video but it's 350Mb. I made this 5Mb 22s 'email quality clip' but although it gives you a wee taste it doesn't play as well on Blogger as on my computer - if anyone is interested then I'll look at putting up a higher quality video on YouTube. Talking of YouTube - here's some great footage of kiwi on one of Rakiura's tramping tracks (opens in new window).

These raids will continue over the next few weeks. A couple of years ago I was walking home with a visitor when more than 100 tui flew from one side of the road to the other - all you could hear was the beating of tui wings. Magic!

My camera, though great at macro photos, only has a 4x optical zoom so it's not the best for bird shots - I'll have to resurrect my 14 year old Olympus C2100.

The kereru are back in town

Tui in Fuchsia excorticata

There's only been a couple of rats caught in the last month on my section but both were large adults so great that they're out of the breeding population. Our wee native birds take such a hit with the introduced pests and I'm so glad that Rakiura doesn't have any mustelids. Aotearoa's birds are well worth fighting for and there are lots of opportunities for volunteers to check traps either on community or conservation land - google 'trap volunteers' and see if there's anything near you.

Female adult ship rat