They're never too far away, and like to snack on bugs disturbed by passing humans. Their endearing chitter and squeak and of course that gorgeous tail makes them a favourite of most who come across them.
An adult pied morph (two photos), a black morph fledgling, and a juvenile pied morph.
Today I crossed one thing off my bucket list. Seeing a kākāriki karaka nest fledge! I had never seen a nestling take its first flight and make the change from nest-bound infant to flying bird. Today I did. No photos, I went for video instead. I knew the nest was due to fledge from the appearance of the nestlings, and that some of the birds may already have left.
No tripod, so I was leaning against a tree holding the camera as still as I could. The male arrived and landed in the foliage of an adjacent tree about 8-10m or so from his nest where he remained for the duration. He called briefly to his nestling. The nestling spent about a minute making up its mind then flew to dad. Here's a record of the whole event, minus the first few seconds where dad is calling. In the first few seconds of the video the male can be heard calling from the left. The other parakeet sounds are the nestling.
By the way, the string going past the nest had a purpose. During the Brook's first kākāriki karaka breeding season the Department of Conservation inspected a few of the first nests. When a nest is considered accessible, they fire a bolt from a crossbow attached to string. After multiple attempts (this may take hours) and the string eventually ends up going up, and through, and down where it's wanted, the string is used to pull through a rope. A DOC employee then ascends the rope using jumars and inspects the nest with an inspection camera. Examination of this hole (February 2022) provided the first evidence of hatchlings with their mother.
Once a nest site has been 'shot', the string is left for possible use at another stage. E.g., the time may come when the Brook will provide a source of eggs to maintain genetic diversity in kākāriki karaka populations elsewhere.
I have a few favourite kākāriki karaka and GV-S (Green Violet -Silver) is one of them. He's the most prolific user of one of the feeders, and I have seen him on feeder cameras more than any other bird. I can usually recognise him without seeing his leg bands as he always looks 'serious'.
Here he is perched above the feeder that he owns looking like he's about to quote from Hamlet. Hence I named him Shakespeare. Next photos is a heavy crop; the mugshot demonstrates his 'sideburns' giving him a wise old bird look. 'Cute' does not work for Shakespeare.
I went for a slow walk along one of the monitoring lines in the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary looking for possible kākāriki karaka nests. We knew there were plenty of our birds there, but had never found any nests. I heard what sounded like nest arrival chatter (the chatter a male will make when he arrives at his nest with a stomach full of food), and two very dirty fledglings tumbled down out of the tree. I could not see the nest hole through thick foliage, but clearly they'd just exited their nest. I'd just watched a nest fledge.
One in particular was completely covered in mud. It had rained the previous night, and I suspect the nest wasn't as watertight as the birds would have liked. The fledglings wanted out of there, but one in particular was trying very hard to fly, and failing. It was not going to fly until its feathers were a lot cleaner. I would like to have somehow captured it and given it a bath, but that wasn't an option. Hopefully the mud would dry out and flake off as it flapped its wings. The dad had departed with the other fledgling (flight training) and would likely return to continue feeding the muddy bird giving it the energy to shake off that mud. I departed and left them to it.
I was starting to get the hang of the new camera gear. The depth of field at 600mm was soooo tight, it was rather unforgiving. Only a few centimetres of the photo could be in tight focus. This meant I had to always try to focus on the bird's eyeball. If eyes are in focus, then the shot is in focus. If the wings or shoulder are in perfect focus, but the eye isn't, then most viewers would instinctively regard the shot as out-of-focus (the same applies to photographs of people). Focusing on the eyeball of a small bird in deep shade with a 600mm lens from 6-12m away where the bird is likely to move within a few seconds is not easy. (Some birds kindly stay put for a minute or two though.)
Another major point. Today is the day I started shooting RAW. I'm not sure why I didn't earlier. I wanted the convenience of jpeg I guess. RAW provides plenty of options in post-processing that are difficult if you've shot jpeg, such as white balance adjustments, decent de-noising etc.
These three all have eyeballs pretty much in focus (the first one less so), all wide open (f6.3), 1/640s and ISO in the 9000 - 15000 range. I also like the soft, mostly-round bokeh delivered by this lens.
A 600mm lens makes small-bird mugshots possible. Here's a mugshot session with V-S again (see 27th November post).
It's not uncommon to find a pair of pūtangitangi with their ducklings when coming down the fence line on the western side of the Brook Waimārama Sanctuary. The ducklings are pretty fast, one must run ahead of them to avoid chasing them a long way down the track. The parents will likely hop/fly ahead trying to distract the human(s) from their babies, and once we're well past the ducklings the parents will circle back around to their offspring and resume whatever it is they were doing before the disturbance.
The cuteness of the ducklings is legendary.
