It's spring, and that's when the kākāriki karaka in the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary usually begin nesting. A few may have nested over the winter, but spring - summer - autumn is their normal breeding season.
The Brook kākāriki karaka team confirmed our first nest for the season in the Upper Valley a couple of weeks ago, and have been checking out popular nestholes from previous seasons for activity. We've also checked out a few hot tips from other Brook volunteers, including one in Weka Block. A volunteer noticed a pair of our birds checking out a hole in a tree above his monitoring line last August, and we had a look on a couple of occasions since. Although there was activity nearby, and in the canopy of the target tree, no birds had been seen going into the hole.
So yesterday I had another look and about twenty minutes after I arrived a pair arrived in silence, munched some scale insects (presumably) on a branch near the target cavity, looked at the hole from a couple of metres away, and generally showed interest in the hole.
Here is the male of the pair looking at the hole, a 50cm high slot in the trunk.
A minute later the female was also peering into the cavity.
Then into the hole.
A minute later the male left quietly, and she was in the hole for 17 minutes or so, then she poked her head out and followed her mate. It's a good sign they will nest here, the male seemed to realise that when she went in she was going to be in there for a while and chose not to hang around. And when she left she knew where the male had gone and followed him. This stage of a nest is called 'nest preparation'. She'll be scratching around inside and preparing a good surface for laying and incubating eggs. Egg laying is likely to happen in the next week or two (if it hasn't happened already). At this stage we call it a 'potential nest'. When it becomes pretty clear that there is at least one egg in there (if we see a swollen cloaca, or she is clearly incubating) then we confirm the nest in the database.
