While watching one of our kākāriki karaka nests, I'd been on the lookout (or 'listen-out' I guess) for their second nest (if they had one). I'd heard chatter from down below on a few occasions (in rather unforgiving terrain and bush). So on this day I approached the rough location from below and walked around listening out for chatter. Silently a rather unusual bird glided down from directly above me and landed on a branch a few metres away. I was unsure what it was. It was clearly green, but did not look like any bird I'd seen before. I scratched my head and rapidly went through ideas such as mutated bellbird etc (none of which made any sense!).
For the previous few months we'd been watching kākāriki karaka nests, and closely observed the adult behaviour. But none of us had even seen an egg, let alone a hatchling, let alone a nestling being fed at a nest entrance, let alone a fledgling! It took me a lot longer to work out what I was seeing than it should have. This bird had no leg bands, pink legs, no orange frontal band, so did not look like our 'normal' kākāriki karaka. When the penny finally dropped, I was kicking myself, as my camera was in its holster by my side, zipped up, lens cap on, lens hood reversed. I stayed as still and quiet as I could while frantically getting my camera ready to fire. I was silently begging this precious creature to stay exactly where she was.... please, please, please...... She did. She was in no hurry to move. She was a wide-eyed youngster taking in her new environment. She'd look one way, soak up the information, look another and soak that up too. She didn't pay me any attention other than as part of the scenery to digest.
It later occurred to me that the tree she alighted under happened to be the same tree I'd heard parakeet chatter from a month or so earlier, high in the canopy about 20m up. At the time I thought a pair were stopping there while travelling / feeding etc. But looking back on it with greater knowledge and the benefit of hindsight, what I heard was likely nest chatter. My guess is it was a nest we'd missed, with unidentified occupants. This fledgling likely came from that nest. It's possible she'd been out of her nest for a day, but unlikely to be longer. It's also possible she'd only been out a few minutes, I may have witnessed her first flight. Anyway, she stayed where she was for a few minutes more, long enough to fire off a few photos, and I breathed a massive sigh of exulted relief. Three and a half months after the first translocation we had babies!
The first kākāriki karaka fledgling spotted in the Brook
Anyway, the excitement was shared when I got back to the sanctuary base. Needless to say, it was a story, and this wee girl ended up in the Nelson Mail a week or two later.
