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

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.

NatureWatch.org.nz celebrated its anniversary with a radio interview on last Friday's Nine to Noon show on RadioNZ. Listen to Colin Meurk talking about 'citizen science' here (9 mins 47 secs long, opens in a new window) or check out their Facebook page here.

New beginnings

Winter is not the only thing ending shortly; today heralds the end of my 'service ranger' job and a start on Monday as an 'administration officer'. Major restructures on this scale are stressful but I hope the dust settles soon and strong leadership makes it all worthwhile.

I've decided that cloning myself would solve a lot of problems and help me work through my 'to do' list at lightning speed. Fine weather means firewood time and it's been satisfying to work my way through the woodpiles.

Two woodpiles sorted out - now to get the chainsaw out!!!

There's a thousand other fine weather jobs waiting for me: Darwin's barberry is starting to flower so that needs to be searched out and destroyed, along with gorse, blackberry and lupin. I need to get seeds and seed potatoes planted and my poor blackcurrants still haven't been pruned and transplanted from two years ago. I did manage to install my 3 vertical KaMate rat traps though...

The new KaMate trap on the left along with 2 Victor traps on the right

Lifting the lid on the KaMate trap - the trap's not set yet and putting
some baits around will hopefully get the right 'smells'

Signs of Spring are increasing daily and the birds are getting frisky. The native fuchsia, Fuchsia excorticata, or kotukutuku, is bursting into leaf and flower and I spent 30 minutes trying to get a good photo of the birds feeding on it before giving up and swapping to a flowering brush wattle.

A camera-shy tui who kept hiding in the branches

This waxeye (silvereye) was more co-operative

Despite not getting a good 'bird on the fuchsia' pic, I had fun photographing the new leaves and flowers - the New Zealand fuchsias are apparently the only fuchsias in the world with blue pollen and early NZ pollen fossils have been dated as being over 30 million years old.

How's this for a weird visitor - it was on my jacket after a morning sorting wood.

Is it a bird, is it a plane???

Nah, it's a Bag Moth caterpillar

The end of a Bic biro for scale