Kākāriki karaka - A special bird named Floyd

A reminder on the background of the first kākāriki karaka translocated into the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary in 2021-2022: The birds were mostly raised at the Isaac Conservation and Wildlife Trust, with some also from Orana Wildlife Park and a few from Auckland Zoo. Most birds were a few months old when translocated; they were juveniles ready to spread their wings and claim new territory once given their freedom. A few were older birds who for one reason or another were being released into the wild. Perhaps they didn't form pairs and breed as was expected of them. Perhaps they didn't get on well with other members of their species in their aviary. Perhaps they were surplus males so couldn't be paired. Etc.

A quick note on life expectancy of kākāriki karaka. They've been known to live over 10 years in captivity. The oldest current living bird is 14, and in one case a bird almost reached 17. In original beech forest without predators (the Brook), who knows? [A principal reason for continuing to monitor our translocated birds (the birds with leg bands) is to ultimately calculate the life expectancy of this species.] Over the years some birds we commonly see don't return to feeders in spring, or don't return to their old nest holes ready for another season of breeding. Generally that means we won't be seeing them again i.e, they've probably passed away for one reason or another at several years old.

Anyway, the oldest bird translocated to the Brook was KV-S (left leg blacK over Violet - right leg Silver) but for the first few years of his life at Orana Wildlife Park he was known as Floyd. He was born about June 2018 and for his first year was paired up with a female named Fern, they bred successfully. He subsequently stopped breeding so at about 3.5 years old the decision was made to give him his freedom in the Brook. He quickly paired up with S-PW and they formed a nest. Unfortunately in February 2022 (a few months after translocation of the first birds in November/December 2021) we had a major rain event: 400mm over three days, and three of the eight nests we were following were abandoned (leaky-building syndrome)! Floyd and S-PW's nest was one of them. Our last watch of his nest indicated it was empty. S-PW poked her head in a few times, but she was clearly no longer nest-bound. Floyd made an appearance in the canopy, but made no attempt to contact S-PW at her nest as he would have known she wasn't there.

Two weeks later (5th March 2022) I went back to the vicinity of his nest in an attempt to find Floyd and S-PW prospecting (scoping out the territory nearby for a new nest hopefully). I found Floyd perched in a beech tree nearby chatting loudly: Still upset about the loss of his nest? Calling for his mate S-PW? Announcing himself as king of the forest? Who knows. Here's the last photo I took of him (with my old camera) and the last time anyone saw him.

Over the next months/years it became clear that he was one of the 'gone missing' birds who will probably never be seen again. [We do get the occasional surprise with a visit from a bird on this 'missing' list, where a bird not seen (either in person or detected on a feeder trailcam) turns up without warning 6-12 months after their last appearance. This didn't happen with Floyd.]

Until yesterday.

Precisely 3.5 years after I saw Floyd for the last time, I was walking along one of our monitoring lines (about 170m from where I last saw Floyd in March 2022) with a heavy load (camera not ready) and heard parakeet chatter above the track. I saw a pair feeding in the canopy. I also saw what seemed to be a leg band, so out came the camera as I wanted to know which of our birds was living here. I guessed it could be BG-S (who lives in the vicinity and is detected perhaps once per year). Or VO-S who also nests nearby, is seen more regularly, but can remain undetected for six months or more. Incorrect guesses, it was Floyd! I'm not often gobsmacked in the Brook, but this day I was. I must have quietly muttered "NFW!" twenty times while flicking through my photos not believing what I was seeing.

It took some time and quite a few photos to get the ID, first a silver band, then bare legs on the other bird. Here is one of the first shots of the pair, that's Floyd on the right (the silver band on his right leg is visible if you zoom in), and his unbanded mate on the left. Note that only one or two of the four legs are visible; identifying birds from underneath is notoriously difficult for that reason.

Floyd kindly hopped a little forward (he's now in the middle of the above photo) where his left leg bands are clearly visible. I'd already seen his silver band, but this shot removed all doubt as to which bird he was.

Floyd is 7.2 years old, looking healthy for his age!

So, the question (that will never be answered) is: what has he been doing and where has he been for the last 3.5 years? Did he go somewhere else (where we don't spend much time) and has decided to return to his home?

I think it's more likely Floyd has been here all along, and has been undetected for so long as he has little curiosity in those large bipeds passing below. He ignores the annual kākāriki karaka population counts (where we try to call in all the birds using playback and count them). He gets on with his life, feeding and nesting in his home territory. He has probably raised two broods per year (maybe more). He will likely have quite a few kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, great-great-grandkids etc. After 3.5 years in captivity he has now spent the next 3.8 years in original beech forest safe from mammalian predators.

It is worth mentioning here that for Floyd's 3.5 years in captivity his diet consisted of food (fruit and seeds etc) placed in his aviary by humans. He was also trained on auto-feeders (that distribute sunflower seed and/or parakeet pellets on a timer). Auto-feeders (with trail-cams recording all avian visitors) are placed near the release point for birds to use while they become accustomed to finding their own natural food. The feeders also assist with grounding the birds to their new location; we want them to decide their new home is a good one and that they don't need to go too far (over the fence) in search of food.

Floyd never set foot on a feeder once released into the Brook, not even once. Everything he has eaten since release has been food he found himself. Floyd was clearly destined to be feeding and breeding as a wild, free bird from the moment of his release from captivity. Live long and prosper, Floyd!

Kākāriki karaka - spring is coming

I had a look in the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary yesterday for signs of nest prospecting in our kākāriki karaka population. I saw a few pairs feeding in the canopy, and on a couple of occasions were peering into potential nest holes. A volunteer I met during the day mentioned he had seen one of a pair entering a hole in a beech tree. Nest prospecting can last for quite some time (a few weeks to a few months) before the biological trigger for egg laying becomes apparent.

In the meantime, some photos of my little green friends from yesterday. Lighting was rather harsh (patchy sunlight and deep shade), I tried an experiment with underexposing and correcting in post. I kinda like the outcome, not sure about the bokeh in the fourth photo though, nice for a change but I would not like it like that all the time.

Fischer's Eggs - part 2

I visited the Fischer's Egg Farm (see below post) again yesterday, six days after my previous visit. In the interim the site had been subject to some Fischer's Egg tourism! Plenty of Brook Waimārama Sanctuary volunteers were keen to see and/or photograph these rare fungi.

It was interesting to see what effect time had had on them. The first photo below is copied from my previous post. The second is the same three eggs but six days later. Note the one on the right was in much more of a hurry to escape its shell than the lower one.

This one is about the size of a marble. Note that it has completely detached from its shell (above it) and rolled down the hill.

Looks like a bunch of fruiting bodies all growing on top of one another.

It would be tempting to dig around here and see what it looks like underground (of course I didn't). That's likely exactly what a pig would have done if they'd been allowed. There would be a pile of overturned soil and we could only guess at what tasty morsels had been eaten. I could imagine a pig destroying a patch of 20+ Fischer's Eggs in a few minutes.

Fischer's Eggs

I have a lot of eggs in this post, but no birds eggs! Fischer's Egg fungi are endangered, and only found in a couple of places in New Zealand. They're also found in Tasmania. A Fischer's Egg is the fruiting body of the Claustula genus of fungi, the rest of the organism exists below ground. The first one found in the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary since the sanctuary became pest-free was in 2020; more examples have been found in the Sanctuary since then. This genus may be benefitting (perhaps greatly) from the earlier removal of browsing ungulates, although that is not certain. 

In July 2021, sanctuary-volunteer Wayne Hennessy found one on a minor spur on a monitoring line I commonly walk. The following week I inspected it on my way past. Every visit since then I've looked at that spot for another fruiting event. A little over two years later (October 2023) I saw an egg in exactly the same spot.

In June this year (2025) during the kākāriki karaka population count, I was walking the line again with sanctuary employee Henry Hart and showed him where those two eggs had grown; there was no egg, but Henry promptly found one half a metre above that spot!

Last weekend I was passing that spot again, and quickly found five more Fischer's Eggs. Two on the track, and the other three a couple of metres below the track. Given how quickly I found them without trying, I guessed there could be plenty more nearby up and down the spur.

So yesterday I bush-bashed down the spur towards the eggs I'd found last week, and found a large patch of them about 100m above last week's find. I could count about 27 without moving my feet; there were about 29 in that patch. Then I continued down the spur finding one more on the way and arrived at the ones I'd found last week. I found about 12 more nearby. So 42 new Fischer's Eggs; not bad for a morning's work. Here are a few of them.

A few 'hatched' eggs in good condition. Note the remains of the 'shell' (the pink/brown skin that initially enclosed the egg).

A few older eggs beginning to decay.

This one still enclosed in the 'skin'.

An early-stage one pushing the soil aside.

A couple of unusually-shaped eggs. Note two more either hatching or about to hatch in the second photo. The one in the last photo is about the size of a small fist.

Kākāriki karaka - just some more mugshots

The kākāriki karaka were pretty friendly yesterday in the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary. So it was mugshot time. Here are a few shots I liked.

The guy in the third and fourth photos seems to have had some feather loss around his eyes, but tiny feathers seem to be growing back. (I'm just guessing that that's what's going on.)

Korimako & tauhou feasting on the last apples

There is a Bramley apple tree near my house. They're the best cooking apples, they have an intense flavour and turn to puree when cooked, so they're perfect for sauce. They're late season apples, usually picked in May / June. There were plenty left over this year, so I left them on the tree for the birds. I expect they'll last until well into July, perhaps even August. Commonly there will be a flock of tauhou (waxeye / silvereye) feasting, and on occasion a korimako (bellbird) or two.

The korimako are known bullies, and even though there are probably 100 apples left in the tree, will chase a tauhou off an apple and claim ownership of it. The tauhou will generally watch for a bit then start snacking on another apple. There is plenty for everyone.

Below: a tauhou watching a korimako today, and another watching the cameraman. And a korimako feasting on an apple after chasing off the tauhou.

Kākāriki karaka 2025 population count

As has been done every year since their reintroduction, we attempted to count the population of kākāriki karaka in the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary early this week. Department of Conservation staff drove up from Rangiora, some Nelson City Council staff helped out, and with Brook staff and volunteers it was all hands on deck with approximately 24 people doing the survey. Twelve lines were walked, with parakeet playback audio played through speakers on a rough 200-300m grid. Surveyors listen for responses, then try to lure in any parakeets detected and identify them. The survey was conducted on Sunday, then repeated on Monday (with surveyors changing lines to reduce data-collector bias).

Approximately 150 playback points were used, and this data was added to lower-priority playback data collected over the previous two days in areas with lower expected parakeet density.

So, how many kākāriki karaka did we count? Well, that's a difficult one to answer for a few reasons:-

• The birds showed only modest interest in our playback survey last year; this year they showed even less interest. This means that an unknown number of parakeets will likely remain undetected during the survey. (Of the 42 parakeets detected during 23 playback points on my two lines, I'm only moderately confident that two of them may have reacted to the playback, the rest appeared unresponsive to the playback.) For whatever reason, they aren't interested in the playback. Perhaps they're clever enough to know it doesn't come from 'real' birds. Or perhaps they detect the playback doesn't come from birds resident in the sanctuary (the playback audio was recorded elsewhere). Or perhaps parakeets are now so common in the sanctuary that the sound of parakeets chattering nearby is immaterial to them. Your guess is as good as mine....

• Over the last month or two, it has become clear that the parakeets in the sanctuary are going through a 'quiet' phase. They are there, but not being very vocal. In many cases they are going about their lives in complete silence. Small green birds in the tree canopy the same colour as the leaves become quite a lot harder to detect if they're also silent! What's the explanation for this silence? Nesting has ended (nesting involves communication). Offspring have grown up and become independent (parents with fledglings make quite a bit of noise for a time). There are signs that food is plentiful in the sanctuary, so perhaps the parakeets don't feel the need to inform other birds about the presence of food. Etc. Birds are not performance artists, their vocalisation would tend to be communication of some sort, and if they have nothing to say, then it seems likely to me that they won't say it. Hence their quietness.

• Upon upload of the playback data (the playback points used and any birds detected), the DOC database malfunctioned and some data was not added to the database, users then had some of their data erased from their input devices (their mobile phones). The missing data was subsequently detected but we have been told that it will take some months to add to the database. I do not have access to the missing data.

I am not terribly patient, and chose to not wait for a few months for the missing data. I also know that some of the participants in the survey (and anyone else involved in anything at all at the sanctuary) would like some indication of how the survey went and any indicators to our parakeet population. (I have been asked a few times how many birds we found, and was not sure how to answer.) So I scraped the database for what information was there, used a fudge factor for the missing data, and the biggest fudge factor of all; the likely non-detection rate of our parakeets (i.e., what percentage of our birds did we miss due to their silence and non-response to the survey).

I did come up with a likely population range (that I think our kākāriki karaka population is very likely to lie within), but won't post the numbers here as it's very unofficial - it's only MY numbers - but will say that I'm pretty happy with the number. It is consistent with continued significant year-on-year population growth. It also is consistent with anecdotal information indicating a healthy population. E.g., most of the previously-used nest holes we watched over the summer became active at some stage (some more than once). We confirmed more nests this season than in previous years even though we didn't try as hard (and didn't have the benefit of radio tracking). Parakeets are being detected further west and down the valley. Etc. The closest I'll get to providing my best estimate for the kākāriki karaka population in the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary in writing at this stage would be "a few hundred". Hopefully that will keep everyone happy until the official (and somewhat more scientifically-robust) number becomes available some months from now. 

In the meantime here's a mugshot of one of the population I met yesterday.