Kākāriki karaka portraits

I've accumulated plenty of photos of my Little Green Friends that have never seen the light of day. Here are a few.

I would love to know what this guy is thinking (above three photos).

This guy has had some feather depigmentation. Reason unknown, he seems healthy.

This guy was snacking on something in the end of the rotten branch (bugs?) and throwing bits out.

Our symmetrical pair: O-YB and YB-O.

One of our friendliest birds (above). I was having lunch, he popped over to land directly above me when I chatted to him from a distance.

Kārearea nest - about to hatch?

I passed by the kārearea nest again today; as I arrived Fred flew in from the west, perched above the nest and called out repeatedly. I think he was calling for Wilma. Soon afterwards he headed into the nest, then left. My calculations show that the eggs are due to hatch tomorrow (median date based on an estimate of when they started laying).

Kākāriki karaka - missing birds make an appearance

The Department of Conservation maintain a database of the kākāriki karaka: their presence and behaviours. Brook Waimārama Sanctuary volunteers make database entries for any significant sightings of our birds, at feeders, nests, or random sightings. These days we don't bother recording every sighting of a bird as it would involve far too much unnecessary information. We record nest behaviour, and I keep the database moderately up-to-date with the most-recent appearance of birds identified on the feeders. Occasionally a sighting will be added to the database if something significant occurs, e.g., a pair is behaving in a manner suggesting they may be nesting in an area where there are no known nests, or perhaps a bird is detected in a part of the sanctuary where they aren't commonly seen.

Last week Deb Corbett spotted a bird we'd never previously identified while we were descending Kākāriki Spur and identified her by leg bands as O-BG. She had been released into the Brook in our last release of birds in March 2023 and not been seen since she flew out of the aviary. 

A few days later I was processing the feeder-camera images, and spotted another bird, also released in March 2023, and also never seen since. This guy was GV-O, and was making his first ever recorded feeder appearance on the feeder two days before Deb spotted O-BG.

So this was good news! How many other birds were there living in the Brook that we had on the 'missing' or 'undetected' list but had been there all along?

First photo: I spotted O-BG leaving her nest today (yes, she is nesting) right where Deb had spotted her last week. Below that is the first feeder camera image of GV-O.

Kākāriki karaka copulation

Kākāriki karaka are not often photographed or filmed copulating. They can sometimes be seen through the foliage copulating, but have a habit of being reasonably well hidden. I saw this pair today fertilising their next egg and snapped off a few shots. There was foliage between the birds and my camera on the lower right half of the images, so I sharpened the images substantially so they didn't look too smudged out. Hence the somewhat 'hyper-real' appearance.

Kārearea nest - incubation

I was heading down the spur past the kārearea nest today, the male was nest sitting. I watched for a few minutes from the rope on the downhill side of the excluded area and he left the nest, perched on a branch nearby and called out repeatedly. My guess is he'd had enough nest sitting, perhaps was getting hungry, and was calling for his mate. She did not appear in the few minutes I was there (she could have been some distance away, although falcon calls are pretty loud and carry well).

About now I decided to call them Fred and Wilma (Fred Falcon etc).

Fred calling for his mate.

Kākariki karaka are nesting

We've been going around previously-used nest holes checking for activity. Some of them have received a lot of attention over the last few months. Our birds were prospecting, but mostly had not moved onto nesting. This is not uncommon behaviour. At some stage they receive the biological trigger to start laying (likely surplus food) and an 'interesting' hole in a tree trunk them becomes a nest.

We found a few more today, here are three previously-used nest holes that are again in use for the 2024/2025 season.

The female leaps out of her nest for a feed after being called off her nest (below).

Male called the female out (below), she poked her head out but either wasn't hungry or was busy (about to lay an egg perhaps?) as she went straight back in, and the male left.

Male (top, with leg bands) called off the female, here she comes out for a feed.

World Parrot Trust trip

By request I guided two staff from the World Parrot Trust into the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary today; they were Oceania Regional Director Dr Luis Ortiz-Catedral and Executive Director Dr Jamie Gilardi. Also present was a principal sponsor of the World Parrot Trust, his name was Joe (never got his surname!).

Luis is originally from Mexico, but did his post-grad in New Zealand and lives here. He has conducted research on kākāriki, in particular translocation methods. None of the three guests had previously visited the sanctuary, they had a short window of opportunity today so we made the most of it.

We drove up the eastern fence-line track so our guests could have a good view of the sanctuary from the outside, then entered at Kākāriki Hatch and walked through the sanctuary over about five hours passing by the soft-release aviaries (for kākāriki karaka) and the soon-to-be (hopefully) kākā aviary on the way out. A good day was had by all, humans and birds.

Some photos from today (of the birds, of course).

Kārearea - it's a nest!

Today was the first time I'd seen one of our pair sitting on the nest. Two days ago the nest had no eggs. It looked today like egg-laying time had arrived. Here's the female sitting in her nest.

Kārearea nest preparation?

Late September we detected kārerea (NZ falcon) activity around a hollow under a decaying log, it appeared nest preparation was in progress. We roped off the site as it was close to a track used by Brook Waimārama Sanctuary staff and volunteers, too close for the comfort of the birds and humans. I'd been checking it out whenever I passed (about once per week) for signs of activity. The last activity I saw was 7th October. We'd been considering whether the rope could be safely removed as the site appeared inactive (cobwebs across the hollow entrance, no fresh droppings or regurgitation pellets). Until today.

I walked up the spur, over the rope, and saw no eggs (or anything else) in the potential nest hollow. I was standing right next to the hollow (about 2m away), I'd been there for a few seconds when a blood-curdling screech from above shook me to my core. I looked up, and a female kārearea was in the air about 5-6m above me, wings flapping and shrieking. She was making herself look and sound as intimidating as possible (although no attempt was made to attack). She was trying to scare me away. It worked. I beat a hasty retreat to a spot about 10m away.

The male then turned up, and on the other side of the log (about a metre from the 'nest' hollow) I saw them feeding on the carcass of a decent-sized bird. It appeared to be perhaps a tūī or California quail. It appeared they'd stashed the carcass there, and perhaps that was the reason for the aggression, they may have thought I was going to raid their food supply.

Anyway, once I was 10m away (outside the rope) the pair of them seemed unconcerned by my presence and ignored me thereafter, so I took some photos. The only appearance of the female in these photos is the one where she is feeding while the male watches from his perch. The other photos are the male.

Kākāriki karaka

Such pretty birds, whenever I'm close enough and I've taken a photo or two of the whole bird, I like to zoom in to 600mm, crop most of the bird out and go for a mugshot. A few recent random shots with some mugshots here.

Tuatara

So they don't have feathers.... sue me. New Zealand's living fossil - tuatara - are back in the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary. There were 56 released today into pre-prepared burrows. I won't provide a natural history lesson on these fascinating creatures, there is plenty written about them elsewhere. Here's an article on the event in the local newspaper.

Some photos of these baby Godzillas from the day. Note my reflection in the eyeball in the third (and the crop in the fourth) photograph. 

Tītitipounamu - rifleman

The smallest bird in New Zealand is also rather elusive. They are insectivorous, they feed from the ground to the canopy, and are sometimes seen 'walking' up tree trunks snacking on bugs. They weigh 6 grams, and seem to be programmed to move every second.  Even when not moving they seem to flick their wings every half second. To date I'd had one barely passable photo of this tiny bird taken from a distance. I wanted more and better, so spent four hours walking a 1.6km section of monitoring line in the upper regions of the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary.

Tītitipounamu have a very high pitched chirp, it's around 20kHz and often ultrasonic, so many people (particularly as they age) are unable to hear them. I can still hear them, but suspect my days of hearing their zit zit zit are drawing to a close.

Today I saw plenty of tītitipounamu. In fact they were the dominant bird. I stopped every 100m or so and if I heard their tiny peeps I waited. When I saw some I soon realised the only way to photograph them was to spray and pray. Point towards them, as soon as something looks vaguely focused press the shutter on burst mode until there doesn't appear to be any birds remaining in the viewfinder. I took close to 1000 shots, many contained no birds, and deleted about two thirds on first pass. Still, I ended up with 20-30 I'm happy with so that was a good outcome. My target list is now complete, and I have enough birds for my 2025 calendar.

I wanted to post 25 pics but managed to shrink it down a little. First off, females with wings in.

Next up, a male front and back with wings both in and out.

A female being rather photogenic.

The third photo here (below) would have been my favourite of the lot if it had been in focus...... aarrgghhh.... She was just too fast for my camera's Expeed 6 processor. An Expeed 7 may be needed. Tool blaming....

Finally, although technically it's not great (foliage between me and the subject for starters), it was my favourite sequence as it tells a story. A very short story on the human time-scale. I initially saw the female (on the left), so started shooting in burst mode. Then a male (with a beak full of crane fly) entered the scene. Four consecutive images (at 8 frames per second) cover the action: male arrives with crane fly, hops up the branch, offers the crane fly, female rejects it/him and departs upwards. So that action sequence / soap opera took a total of half a second. I had no idea it was happening other than I saw a flash of crane fly in the viewfinder. Note that the male goes from wings out to wings in in under 1/8 second. The female also goes from perched to airborne a full body length away in under 1/8 second. Eventually (i.e., a second later) the male presumably decided to not let the tasty meal go to waste and I guess he ate it himself.