Kākāriki karaka nest prospecting

It's September, and many of our birds are thinking about breeding. Here's a pair checking out a potential nest hole today.

The male watches his mate from foliage a few metres from the potential nest cavity entrance while she investigates its potential.

He gets closer wondering if she likes the site.

The female exits the cavity after a few minutes checking it out.

If they like the site, they may check it out repeatedly over a period of time (and probably others sites as well) and settle on the one they prefer.

Kākāriki karaka preening

Not as good as the preening shot I got last November, but a nice sequence.

Korimako - bellbird

It would be impossible to enter forest (native or exotic), or go just about anywhere at all in NZ without encountering bellbirds. They are busy and noisy. If you see a bird in the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary out of the corner of your eye it was probably a bellbird. They brighten the forest with their song, and are known to be aggressive towards competition (other birds). They also have a habit of relentless, incessant squawking at a ruru or kārearea perched in the canopy (hoping to drive it away perhaps) and certainly warning other birds that a predator is present.

Here are a couple of adults, and a couple of fledglings.

Kakaruai - South Island robin

Along with pīwakawaka (NZ fantails), our kakaruai are probably the 'friendliest' birds in the South Island forest. While they're not 'friendly' per se, like pīwakawaka they are keen on the bugs that humans are likely to disturb. Sit down for more than a few minutes and they may well be hopping around your feet. A few minutes more and they're on your boots tugging at loose threads. With enough time, and if you're lucky enough, they may hop onto your knee or even onto your hat (that happened to me once for a second during a two-hour kākāriki karaka nest watch). Here are a few I've met over the last few months.

Birds New Zealand - field trip

The annual conference of Birds New Zealand (The Ornithological Society of New Zealand Inc) was in Nelson over the weekend. The conference finished up with a field-trip day. I and another Brook volunteer led one of the field trips to the middle of the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary to see kākāriki karaka (the second-most critically-endangered forest bird in New Zealand, the kākāpō tops that list).

I had warned participants that although a detection or two of our target birds was very likely, there was always a chance that we may not get terribly close. A memorable detection would become more likely with more time spent in the sanctuary.

Present on the field trip was well-known NZ ornithologist Dr. Colin Miskelly (he manages the NZ bird encyclopedia New Zealand Birds Online). Over the summer he'd walked 3225 km doing the Te Araroa Trail logging every bird he saw or heard. It amounted to 104,429 bird detections all up. I thought I was a keen birder until I met Colin. I felt like a slacker by comparison. Although I bet I've seen a lot more kākāriki karaka than he has!

We set off uphill at a brisk pace (giving us more time in the 'hot zone'). An hour after we set off (and a height gain of 250m) we stopped at one of the monitoring lines, within a few minutes a couple of kākāriki karaka appeared in the foliage nearby. Not a great view, but officially that was mission accomplished! As it was still morning, I suggested we gain another 150m and head slowly east along one of the higher monitoring lines, that would bring us into the middle of the kākāriki karaka hot zone and a likelihood of more detections.

Sure enough, we had a few more detections. E.g., this guy here appeared to have just fed his mate (courtship feeding), a reasonable sign that they may be considering a winter nest.

Along the way we met a friendly kakaruai / south island robin, a few ngirungiru / tomtits, a brief view of a tītitipounamu / rifleman, and the usual hordes of korimako / bellbirds amongst others.

Ngirungiru / tomtit

Kakaruai / south-island robin

After a lunch break, we had the most memorable of our kākāriki karaka interactions. A curious solitary male checked us out for 6-7 minutes, initially in the foliage nearby, then he landed atop a decaying tree trunk overhead for a few minutes, then back into the foliage. He came within about 3m of us at one stage, more than close enough to bring smiles to faces and the icing on the cake of a successful day.

Another population count

Brook Waimārama Sanctuary volunteers, staff, and Department of Conservation staff (most participants were DOC staff as many Brook volunteers were overseas) performed our annual kākāriki karaka population count using playback (see 2023-07-22 post on last year's population count for methodology).

Day 1 was overcast, a bit of drizzle perhaps, and birds were a bit quiet, we counted 170-odd birds. Day 2 was sunny and we counted (raw data) 240+ birds. This was considered a very good outcome. The birds were not particularly interested in our playback, few came in to check out the source of the recorded kākāriki karaka calls. Perhaps many of them remembered it from last year. Perhaps they just weren't interested in yet another bird calling about nothing in particular. What was clear is that most of the birds counted were detected in between playback points, i.e., something closer to random sightings. It would be reasonable to assume that we missed quite a few more birds than were counted twice. Almost all of the birds detected were unbanded (born in the sanctuary), although the band status of many of the detected birds was unclear (i.e., their legs were not seen). All up, a case could be made for the population being significantly higher than 240. Clearly we had substantial year-on-year population growth again, 40% would be a reasonable estimate again.

Some unbanded kākāriki karaka detected during the population count yesterday and today.

While the bird news was great, our joy was tempered by the knowledge that half of the DOC Kākāriki Karaka Recovery Programme staff we'd got to know over the years (including half the staff involved with the current count) are to fall victim to heavy budget cuts next month and are being laid off. This is likely to be the last time we'd be working with many of them in the Brook.

Kārearea - NZ falcon

About once per year a kārearea lands close enough to me for a photo or two. I see them a lot more often overhead though. Kārearea have large territories. In pine forest in NZ it's estimated there is about one pair per 9 km2. As the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary is 7 km2, it's conceivable there may only be one or two pairs. There appear to be a pair resident mid-Kākariki Spur, and others are seen regularly on the eastern fence-line (probably a different pair).

I saw this one on Tuatara Spur, a short flight from Kākariki Spur (a 30 minute walk for a human, or a 30 second flight for this bird) so it may be one of the Kākariki Spur pair.