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.

Tūī

They're fast, vocal, sometimes beautiful notes, other times less so. Iridescent, and can be quite tricky to photograph (expect blown highlights and the rest underexposed). Here are a few shots from one in a large tōtara outside my front door. The sun had set, the bird was in deep shade, so the colours are nicely displayed.

The last shot is a tūī on a flax bush in my garden, note the pollen on its head.

Riroriro - grey warbler

Riroriro are tiny birds, they weigh about 6 grams. They have a voice larger than their size, and their tuneful melodies are everywhere. Seen far less often than they're heard, and even harder to photograph as they seem to be programmed to move every few seconds.

I'd been stalking them for some time, had them in my viewfinder a few times and as I was about to press the shutter release they were gone. My lens is long and heavy, and the focus isn't super fast. Also, at 600mm depth of field is awfully tight, so each time the bird moved it took some time to find anything at all to focus on, the bird is easily missed if focus is off by a short distance.

The day I photographed the pīpīwharauroa was also the day I succeeded with riroriro. Walking out along Koru track, I heard the familiar tune, stopped with lens held up and crossed my fingers. A singing wee bird turned up on a branch just above me for 10 seconds or so, then moved to another branch and did the same. All up, he spent about five minutes within sight. Up the hill a short distance another male was singing the same territorial song, I'm guessing that may have been the reason for my bird hanging around in the same place for as long as it did.

Pīpīwharauroa - shining cuckoo

I've been intending to make a Nelson Birds calendar for 2025, and wanted one native species per month. I had nine, perhaps ten at a squeeze, so needed two or three more species. On my 'wanted' list were pīpīwharauroa (shining cuckoo), riroriro (grey warbler), and tītitipounamu (rifleman). Today I got lucky with two of them: pīpīwharauroa and riroriro (a bit of 'making my own luck' involved).

Pīpīwharauroa are an enigmatic bird. They're migratory, and a brood parasite. They breed in NZ, Australia and a few other Pacific Islands. The NZ subspecies only breeds in NZ.

Each bird begins its life hatching in a riroriro nest; riroriro are widely spread throughout New Zealand. It instinctively upon hatching ejects all riroriro eggs and/or hatchlings from the nest and is then raised by the tiny riroriro pair until independence. Some months later (autumn) it heads 4000km to the Bismarck Archipelago or Solomon Islands where it spends the winter. In spring it heads back to New Zealand, pairs up, and lays a single egg in a riroriro nest (after ejecting one riroriro egg). The bird has no part to play in incubation or raising its young. The cycle then repeats.

I'd been looking for these birds for three years. In the 2022/2023 season I heard them regularly, both at home and in the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary. I briefly saw a pair up the hill above my house, but no camera. In 2023/2024 I heard them everywhere. Never even saw a feather!

Today the cuckoo drought ended. I was having lunch (while watching a kākāriki karaka nest in the Brook) and a pair landed mid-canopy not too far away. I grabbed my camera and stalked them for a few minutes, long enough to take a few hundred photos (commonly in burst mode). Here are a few.

Edit: A month later I was walking down the western fence-line at the Brook and had another interaction with a pair, so I'll post them here. Here is one (below) calling (presumably to its mate). Note how the body shape changes, the torso flattens and cheeks puff out while calling.

Kārearea nest site

The male kārearea (NZ falcon) is still checking out their potential nest site (we first saw him there 30th September). Still no sign of the female at the nest, but the male appears interested. At one stage the pair of them flew overhead but the female did not visit the nest site. She may not be ready for nesting just yet.

Kākāriki karaka in the light

These birds look good at any time, but here are a few recent photos showing them in sunflecks, backlit, through foliage, or where in some way the light is playing a part in showing what beautiful creatures they are. By the way, 'kākāriki karaka' translates to 'green orange' in Māori, i.e., the green bird with orange.

Te Ara Mōrehu

The Department of Conservation released a ten-year recovery strategy for kākāriki karaka. Plenty of my photos made it into their publication Te Ara Mōrehu.