Skip to main content

Putangitangi, the paradise shelduck



This being the duck shooting season, paradise ducks in the paddocks around Greytown are especially wary and start sounding the alarm even though I am still a great distance away, walking my dog as I am want to do. The male has the deeper voice, dueting with his mate as they fly off.

Putangitangi, the paradise shelduck, is endemic to New Zealand, that is it is found nowhere else in the world. It was discovered first by Captain Cook at Dusky Sound in 1773 during his second voyage. Cook called it the Painted Duck. They were not a common bird before settlement by Europeans but are now the one endemic bird which has prospered with the conversion of native forest to pasture. They have increased greatly in numbers through this century and are now only partially protected.

They are a large duck and are always seen in pairs except during the moulting season. The drake has a black head with a greenish gloss, the body being dark grey barred with black. The undertail and tertials are orange chestnut. The duck has a white head and the body is a bright orange chestnut.

They mainly graze on grass and weeds, or standing crops of peas or grain which can mean they often get on the wrong side of farmers.

Most paradise duck start breeding when 2 years old and pairs remain together from year to year, returning to the same nesting area. If one bird dies, its mate occupies the same territory and re-mates again. Having adapted to New Zealand when it was largely forested, they are able to nest in trees, in the epiphytes which festoon many New Zealand treees, but now they usually nest on the ground, well hidden beneath a log or clumps of grass. The ducklings have a striking pattern of brown and white down but when they fledge at around eight weeks they resemble adult males, except the females have whiter patches around the eyes and the base of the bill.

Ducks provided Maori with quite a considerable portion of their food supply in some favoured districts, including the Wairarapa. When the ducks were moulting they became very fat and it was at this time that the rahui, which protected the birds during their breeding season, was lifted. The birds having become flightless, could be collected, driven and herded from open lake waters into the water plants lining the shores and there caught in very large numbers. Women and children often took part in the drive, everyone entering the canoes and to make a pleasure jaunt of it. Dogs were also used to capture the birds.

Sir W. Buller tells us that in 1867, 7000 duck were taken in three days at lake Rotomahana. Similar numbers were also being taken at other lakes at the same time. The ducks taken were primarily Parera, the grey duck, but paradise duck were also among the numbers. This was long before Mallard ducks were introduced. When such large numbers of birds were taken many of them were cooked and preserved in their fat in gourds or bark vessels.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Aphis and Ants, the end of the anthropocene

Marta had been awoken as usual by their antennae softly stroking her on the inner wrist. They seemed to wait until they were sure she was awake before crawling up her arm. They stroked her arm again just inside the elbow. She suspected they were administering a local anaesthetic.  She waited with the usual sense of dread for the tiny pin pricks as they probed. There were always just three of them.  Were they the same three ants every day? She couldn't tell. They were on the large size for ants, but ants they were, although their proboscides was more mosquito like than  that of any ant.  It was over in a few minutes. They waddled off with the bags inside their legs full of her blood. They disappeared under the door.  There was no keeping them out. They could fire off acid to dissolve any lock, any door, and leave humans a pulpy heap if they resisted or tried to fight back.
They always made Marta think of the ants on the rose bushes she observed as a child, herding and milking aphids…
1 comment
Read more

A Murder of Rooks

From Southland to Northland, Regional Councils around the country are once again putting out the call for sightings of rooks, Corvis frugilegus, in their efforts to exterminate them.
The rook is a minor agricultural pest, on a par with the yellowhammer, so how did this bird become a target for extermination rather than control? How did this bird become an unwanted organism under the Biosecurity Act?
The rook is a black, hoarse–voiced bird about the size of a magpie which was brought to New Zealand from Britain between 1862 and 1874 to help control agricultural pests. Unlike many other European birds introduced at the same time, rooks spread very slowly at first. Even as late as 1970, they were largely confined to parts of the Hawke’s Bay, Manawatu, southern Wairarapa and Canterbury.
In the 1971 rooks were declared an agricultural pest in the Hawke’s Bay, largely because of the damage done to emerging crops.  Something like 35,000 thousand were shot, probably about half the population. Co…
Post a Comment
Read more

Elegy for the Tui

Sit on your nest above the shining water, The leaves electric, the sky cerulean, And sing your song which has no ending. Prosthermadera novaeseelandiae

Swell your throat with notes too high to hear, Too full of the love which casts out fear, Too great for wrong and rapine to exist. Prosthermadera novaeseelandiae

Fly high, wings folded, dive in ecstasy,  Be your pugnacious, mellifluous self,
Full of the joys of life, sweet nectar, Prosthermadera novaeseelandiae
Post a Comment
Read more