greytown county almanac

Blackbirds

2011-12-16T13:46:00.000-08:00

Walking my dog today, I noticed that a few of the feijoas are flowering. The feijoas made me think of blackbirds, oddly enough.

The adult male blackbird is black, very black with blackish-brown legs, a yellow eye-ring and an orange-yellow bill. The adult female is in contrast is a sorry brown with a dull yellowish-brownish bill. The juvenile, is similar to the female, but has pale spots on the upperparts, and a speckled breast and are often mistaken for the song thrush. As the young birds mature, they may be seen with patches of black and brown. There are a lot around at this time of year, whistling in the undergrowth, hoping their parents will continue to feed them.

Unlike the thrush which sings through the winter, the blackbird remains silent until the spring when it becomes an annual competion among birders to record the first blackbird singing. The song usually ceases in December but has been heard as late as February. The blackbird's song is very much the largest part of the dawn chorus here in town and far out numbers the Tui's. Last summer there was a blackbird which persisted in singing at night on top of the old council building acoss the road, something to do with the street lighting, I suppose.

Ornitholigists have noted that birdsong uses the same musical scales as we do. Certainly many composers and poets have taken a great deal fom birdsong. Mozart had his pet starling and Beethoven his blackbird, which may be heard in the opening rondo of Beethoven's violin concerto in D, Opus 61. In many species it appears that although the basic song is the same for all members of the species, young birds learn some details of their songs from their fathers, and these variations build up over generations to form dialects. Living in towns and cities birds pick up other sounds as well and may incorporate them into their songs.

But I digress. I started out talking of feijoas which in their native South America are pollinated by birds. The blackbird, together with the myna, have learned the trick of pollinating them in New Zealand. Small birds, such as white-eyes, visit feijoa flowers but research here has revealed that they are ineffective pollinators.

I used to watch blackbirds from the kitchen window on my farm in the Bay of Plenty take apart the feijoa flowers, feeding on the sweet and juicy petals of the brightly coloured flowers, but have never seen them perform the same trick here. My blackbirds here seem to prefer cherries and grapes, while the feijoas languish and produce very little fruit. I'm curious to know whether or not anyone has observed them pollinating feijoas here.

Dunnock

2011-11-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

The dunnock, or house sparrow as some call it, is one of those LBJs as birders call them, “little brown jobs”, drab insigificant birds that are so easily overlooked and mistaken for sparrows. In point of fact, they belong to quite different families, dunnocks are accentors and sparrows are weavers. For the very observant, there are a good many of them in Greytown.

The dunnock is quiet in colour and in manner, unobtrusive rather than shy and will quietly scout about the driveway or under the bushes while I observe it, taking quick peeks at me, just to see what I am about. They have their own special character.

Their bodies are slate grey, streaked with a reddish brown, the deep brown upper mantle streaked black with a slate grey throat and chest and paler lightly striped under parts. They have a fine pointed black bill, unlike the sparrow, for catching insects. They sing in a neat precise manner, as if repeating something learnt by heart.

Their natural breeding range is Europe and western Asia. Several hundred birds were introduced here in New Zealand by the Acclimatisation Societies and private individuals between the 1860 and 1880s.

The Dunnock exhibits mating diversity comparable to that of humans: there are monogamous pairs, polyandrous females with their mates, polygynous males with their mates, and polygynandrous groups of males and females, each of whom has multiple mates. Polyandry is rare in birds, with only about 2% of species showing such a mating system.

The hen, apparently with some help from the cock builds the nest which is well concealed in thick undergrowth or a hedge, normally very close to the ground. It is a neat bowl of twigs, grass and moss lined with hair, feathers and moss.

The diet is mainly small invertebrates, beetles, spiders, flies, aphids, ants and worms. Some small fruits and seeds are also eaten. Most food is taken from the ground, usually not far away from cover.

In spite of being such nondescript birds, they are birds that have gained a lot of attention by people who matter. The famous eighteenth century naturalist, Gilbert White of Selbourne, thought them fine birds but called them hedge sparrows. He observed that they have a remarkable flirt with their wings in breeding time and as soon as frosty mornings come they make a very plaintive piping noise.

Emily Bronte knew the bird by the name dunnock and also knew that it is frequently a foster–parent of a cuckoo. In Wuthering Heights Ellen Dean is asked what she knows of the history of Heathcliff. She replies, “It’s a cuckoo’s, sir... and Hareton has been caste out like an unfledged dunnock”.

The cuckoos in Europe do indeed make shameless use of them but if our cuckoos do the same to them here, there seems to be no record, nor much interest as they are introduced birds..

Korimako, the bellbird

2011-09-14T21:13:00.000-07:00

I often hear a bellbird calling along Udy Street. Often heard but seldom seen as their discreet colouring makes them difficult to pick out of the background greens.
There are just a few bellbirds in Greytown I think, or else they make themselves scarce in the face of the dominant and aggressive Tuis. Of our two more conspicuous honey eaters, the Tui seems to be dominant in the North Island and the bellbird in the South. A few years ago I spent Xmas at Akaroa and there the bellbird was everywhere, including clamorous and numerous juveniles, but not a Tui in sight.

According to the ornithologist, W. H. Oliver, the bellbird was undoubtedly the chief performer in the chorus described by Joseph Banks when Captain Cook entered Queen Charlotte Sound during the first voyage of discovery. “I was awakened by the singing of the birds ashore, from whence we are distant not a quarter of a mile. Their numbers were certainly very great. They seemed to strain their throats with emulation, and made, perhaps, the most melodious wild music I have ever heard, almost imitating small bells, but with the most tunable silver imaginable, to which, may be, the distance was no small addition.”

The impact of the European on the bellbird at first took the form of a rapid and alarming reduction in the number of birds, especially in the cleared portions of the country but also decreases took place in forested districts. The disappearance was most noticeable in the North Island and large areas are still without bellbirds. In 1873 Buller prophesized extinction for the bird but by the turn of the century it had started to make a modest comeback and followed the tui into our suburban gardens, much to everyone’s delight.

They are tenacious defenders of their nests and the female will physically attack an intruder. She has been known to fall to the ground and flap away to distract a predator. They are territorial during breeding season but after breeding they are usually nomadic and solitary moving around to food sources. They are strictly monogamous and pairs remain together for several years. They court in winter when the male sings in front of the female. After mating they often duet.

“Ka rite ki te kopara e ko nei I te ata” — like the bellbird singing in the morning — was a simile used by Maori orators. Korimako and Makomako are just two of the 26 names Maori had for the bellbird.

Prions

2011-08-12T16:34:00.000-07:00

More than a week of severe storms blowing up from the Antarctic has left thousands of sea birds wrecked across New Zealand, not just along the coast but well inland. A local landowner brought in a bird for me this morning, wanting me to help indentify it. After much measuring of the dead bird and consulting of the identification guides, we determined quite confidently that it was a broad-billed prion, and not an antarctic prion which were being reported as being wrecked in large numbers in and around Wellington. The local bird rescuer, the reverend Robin List, confirmed that all the birds he had coming in from around the Wairarapa were broad-billed.

A wreck is when very large numbers of seabirds die and become wrecked around the coast. Sometimes it involves mainly one species, or at other times several species. Some wrecks seem to be caused by storms catching young birds a few days after leaving their nests, others by storms combined with a food shortage. Birds found dead or dying on the beaches are usually only a small fraction of what is occurring at sea. New Zealand lies in the path of seabirds moving eastward in winter from the southern Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Wrecks of 13,000 prions that came ashore in New Zealand during June and July 1964 showed obvious signs of starvation as did a wreck of prions that occurred in 1981 in South Africa and in Chile in 2007. Analysis of dead birds washed up on the world's coasts remains one of the main ways of studying seabird movements throughout the year. The El Nino/Southern Oscillation, a warm water Equatorial current that irregularly flows south along the Chilean and Peruvian coasts is well known to disrupt marine and terrestrial ecosystems and to raise havoc among some seabird populations.

Prions are small birds with blue-grey colouring. The broad-billed prion is characterised by its large broad bill and is found throughout oceans and coastal areas in the Southern Hemisphere. Its colonies can be found on many islands around the coast of New Zealand, in Fiordland, Solander Islands, Foveaux Strait, the Chatham Islands and sub-Antarctic Antipodes Islands. It is probably from these colonies that maybe up to 500,000 birds have been lost, the largest wreck ever recorded.

The broad-billed prion was observed off the East Cape in 1769 during Cook's first voyage and again at Dusky Sound in 1773 by Forster, during Cook's second voyage.

The broad-billed prions diet consists mainly of planktonic crustaceans, but, like other Antarctic prions, it uses its special bill to filter this food from the water. The bill has comb-like fringes called lamellae, similar in principle to the filter plates of baleen whales. It feeds by running across the ocean surface with its bill open under water, moving its head from side to side and skimming for food.

Breeding begins on the coastal slopes of the breeding islands in July or August. The parents incubate the egg for 50 days, and then spend another 50 days raising the chick. Colonies disperse from December onwards.

The prions belong to the Procellariiformes, which were formerly called Tubinares, or tubenoses, and now are generally called petrels. They are almost exclusively pelagic and have a cosmopolitan distribution across the world's oceans, with the highest diversity being around New Zealand.

Procellariiformes have an enlarged nasal gland at the base of the bill, above they eyes. This gland rids the birds of the salt they ingest from sea water.

Spur-winged Plover

2011-08-12T16:32:00.000-07:00

Walking along North Street with my dog, always there are spur-winged plovers to be seen in the paddocks. There used to be two or three pairs but this winter I see just the one pair. I hope this is not a trend!

Travelling throughout New Zealand, especially through farmland, the one bird that one is most likely to see is the spur–winged plover, very often being harried by and, in turn, harrying a harrier hawk. However, spur-winged plovers did not used to be so widespread, the first pair recorded breeding at Invercargill airport in 1932. In spite of the heavy predation of their chicks by harrier hawks and our national propensity for using birds for target practice, their numbers have now become so great that there is talk of culling them. Not a good reason, I would think.

There are two well marked races of this bird; the smaller race, Vanellus miles novaehollandiae, originally just bred in the south–east of Australia but then extended its range to Tasmania and New Zealand. The other, northern, race, Vanellus miles miles, has extended its range from northern Australia to New Guinea.

Both races frequent wet grasslands but will readily adapt to man–made habitats such as pastures, sports grounds, airfields and even median strips on busy roads. Indeed, one will often see them on median strips while driving to Wellington. Somehow they seem to have worked out that their chicks will be safe there from cats and harrier hawks. Their liking for airports however, is not a good idea as it leaves them open to some severe culling because of the fear of bird strike.

This large plover has a black crown, hind neck and shoulders, with the back and wings brown in colour. The underparts are white and the legs and feet are reddish. The bill is yellow and the bird has a yellow facial patch and prominent wattles. It has spurs on its wings.

The spur–winged plover feeds mainly on insects, worms and similar small invertebrates but will also eat seeds. Their main call is a loud, penetrating rattle, often heard at night which may explain why many people have grown to hate them.

Breeding is between June and late November with the peak in August. Several clutches are laid each year. The nest is a scrape in the ground, unlined or scantily lined, situated in rough open pasture, a flat wet area or on stony ground. The clutch of 1 – 4 khaki eggs with brownish, black blotches is incubated by both sexes for 30-31 days. The fledging period is 7 – 8 weeks.

Miromiro, the tomtit

2011-06-09T19:54:00.000-07:00

There is a rumour of a tomtit in Greytown. Perhaps a black fantail missing its tail? Difficult to know without a photograph and sightings may be so fleeting that mistakes are made. However, though not likely, it is possible, as there are tomtits close by in the bush in the Waiohine Gorge.

Tomtits are bush birds, not known to frequent towns, but with the storms of late they may have blown into town or just found their way down the Waiohine River. Bellbirds were late in finding a home in our suburbs so it is possible that tomtits could follow their path. There seems to me to be a curious segregation between our endemic birds and the introduced birds we find in our gardens, which by and large shun the bush. Except for the Tui, the bellbird, and Kereru, our endemic birds such as the robin, tomtit, stitchbird, tieke, kakariki, rifleman and Kiwi, shun our presence and stay in the bush. Would that they could find their way into our gardens.

There are five sub-species of Miromiro, the tomtit; North Island tomtit, toitoi, South Island tomtit, macrocephala, Chatham Island tomtit, chathamensis, Snares Island tomtit, dannefaerdi, and Auckland Island tomtit, marrineri.

Our bird, the North Island tomit, the male is a distinctive black and white, with a black head and a white spot above the bill, black upperparts and upper breast, white underparts, and a white wing bar and sides. Its mate is a dull grey and brown and is not so often seen as the male.

The male tomtit has been described as having a cheery little song which he repeats without much variation at frequent intervals, The call notes of both are the more notable, being loud and piercing and repeated rapidly three or four times with widely–opened bill. To hear them suddenly after a long silence in the bush may be quite disturbing. Maori had many superstitions regarding this bird of Maui.

Putangitangi, the paradise shelduck

2011-05-27T19:15:00.000-07:00

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.

Goldfinches

2011-03-05T17:40:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of goldfinches in and around Greytown. Indeed, I think they could be the most numerous of birds around here, nothwithstanding sparrows have had something of a comeback this summer. Soon the finches will be flocking for the winter and “charms” of over a hundred goldfinches twittering about the district will be quite common. With their bright red faces and gold wing bars they flutter merrily from plant to plant, often hanging upside down to extract seeds.

The natural range of the goldfinch is Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Western Asia. Their commonest European name of thistlefinch has been gained because they are particularly fond of the seeds of thistles, particularly the sow thistle.

They were introduced into New Zealand in the 1860s along with other European birds and are probably now more numerous here than in Europe. They were also introduced into Argentina, Bermuda and Australia.
The goldfinch has figured very large in European folklore and the earliest English literature. The cook in Chaucer’s Canterbury tales was described as being “as merry as a goldfinch in the woods” — gaillard he was as a goldfynch in the shawe.

Because of their liking for thistles, goldfinches were adopted by Renaissance artists to symbolise the Passion of Christ. In Baroccio’s ‘Holy Family’ a goldfinch is held in the hand of St John who holds it high out of reach of an interested cat. In Cima’s ‘Madonna and Child’, a goldfinch flutters in the hand of the Christ Child.

Recently on the NZ Birding news group a birder from the UK was asking birders here if they had noticed any evolutionary changes to the birds introduced into NZ from Europe, considering that these birds have now been here for about 150 years.

It is the classic Darwinian scenario, following the story of the finches on the Galapagos Islands which were so instrumental in formulating his theory of evolution. A very small number of birds, carrying just a portion of the species genetic potential will over time change and radiate to fill the ecological niches which we may offer. Isolated from their parent birds, unlike Australian introduced birds, these birds will in time become truly our own and probably quite different from their European counterparts.

Letter: Lake Wairarapa is no pristine paradise

2011-02-17T00:08:00.000-08:00

OPINION: Contrary to the tone of your article (A Watery Treasure, Jan 29), Lake Wairarapa is a national disgrace. A recent Niwa report has placed the Wairarapa waterway in the top 10 worst lakes in New Zealand with regard to water quality.
Greater Wellington regional council chairwoman Fran Wilde says the council is going to get stock out of water, fence waterways, plant natives, get rid of invasive weeds and improve access, but I fear once again it is all talk. And if there are still godwits on the lake's margins, one would never know as access is well nigh impossible.
Greater Wellington regional council could follow the example of Hawke's Bay Regional Council with the work they have done with Pekapeka swamp and finally do something for the Wairarapa environment - at least, meet their statutory responsibilities.
NARENA OLLIVER
Greytown

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/4611844/Letter-Lake-Wairarapa-is-no-pristine-paradise

Butterflies

2011-01-28T16:31:00.001-08:00

Having developed the habit of watching out for birds, then one is also likely to observe those other beautiful creatures on the wing, butterflies.

The Monarch butterflies are hard to miss as they float about our gardens, alighting on some flower or leaf, giving us time to observe and admire. They are just so voluptuous drifting about the garden before being carried off like any baggage by some male to keep sequestered. Our own endemic butterflies, the red and yellow admirals, however, are likely to be missed as they flit very quickly away before one has a chance to observe their beautiful colouring, the patterns of yellow and the red on black.

Gibbs, the grandson of our most illustrious entomologist G.V. Hudson, claims the Monarch is a native, having got here under its own steam, following the plantings of the milkweeds by missionaries across the Pacific Islands. However, with their legendary ability to fly over enormous distances, they may well have arrived in NZ somwhat earlier as Maori seem to have had knowledge of these butterflies, the larvae of which are able to survive on the leaves of gourds but need the milkweeds to thrive and multiply.

The yellow and red admirals on the other hand are without question endemic to New Zealand. Although they are not fussy about the nettles they need to sustain their larvae, whether or not they are native or introduced. I have to confess, I have been busy planting nettles under the trees at the back of the garden, not just to encourage the butterflies but also to eat myself.

Pohuehue (Muehlenbeckia australis) vines grow all over Greytown, climbing over shrubs and trees and no doubt mistaken for some obnoxious weed to be rooted out. This little climber the copper butterflies favour but I have yet to see one in Greytown. Some bird though must find it useful as the plants keep coming up in my back yard so that I am now busy training some plants over the fence with the hope that some day some copper butterflies might turn up here.

I seem to remember clouds of small butterflies, blues and whites, arising out of the summer grass but haven't seen it in so many years I wonder if it was the stuff of dreams. The younger generations will never miss what they have never seen, and we will quickly forget.

Biological control of Australian brush-tailed possums

2011-01-16T14:53:00.000-08:00

Dear Sir
The Parliamentary Commissioner of the Environment has raised the issue
of biological control of possums. Some 15-20 years ago possums in my
neck of the woods in the eastern Bay of Plenty were virtually wiped
out by a virulent strain of "wobbly possum syndome". The controversy
surrounding the control of possums and 1080 was raging then as now and
biological control was being actively pursued. A virologist visited my
farm to collect samples. I heard nothing more of his efforts and the
possibility of biological control seemed to just disappear from the
scene. I gathered from other sources that Australian wildlife
officials objected to the development of a bio control agent as they
feared it would jump the Tasman and wipe out their (protected)
possums. I am curious to know where this issue is now.
Incidently, for those who oppose the use of 1080, watching possums die
of wobbly possum syndrome was very distressing.

Published Dominion Post, January 17, 2011

Elegy for the Weka (Woodhen)

2011-01-13T17:25:00.000-08:00

Unbridled your curiosity and with a

propensity to annex anything moveable,

I salute you Weka, synonym for a thief.

Crafty and impudent, what does it take for a

flightless bird to survive against the odds, to survive

hoons, lazing on verandas in the summer heat,

using you for target practice: and Lady Barker, -

“They run quickly, availing themselves of the

least bit of cover, but when you hear a short,

sharp cry, it is a sign that the poor Weka is

nearly done and the next thing you see is Fly

shaking a bundle of brown feathers vehemently.

All the dogs are trained to hunt these birds, as they are

a great torment, sucking eggs and killing chickens.”

Silver-eye, wax-eye or white-eye

2010-12-13T14:18:00.000-08:00

Zosterops lateralis, the little silver-eye, is not so numerous in the Wairarapa as it is up north where huge flocks congregate in the winter and descend upon berry producing trees and shrubs in their hoards. Hurrying from tree to tree, from one garden to another, with a continuous, noisy twitter, or uttering short plaintive notes, they set about distributing seeds, mindless as to what is is they are casting about, and with no concern at all as to whether the seeds are native or obnoxious. Poroporo keeps on sprouting in my garden here, undoubtedly spread by silver-eyes.

Now that the house sparrow numbers are very much in decline, the silver-eye is probably New Zealand's most numerous bird, far out numbering the more obvious starlings which tend to get the blame for the silver-eyes' crimes against orchardists. Silver-eyes have a particular fondness for fruit. They happily eat their way through a wide range of fruits, including apples, kiwi fruit, feijoas, figs, grapes, pears and persimmons. Their pointed beaks can break the skin of fruit more readily than other birds, and once the skin is broken it allows other birds the opportunity to feast. But as Buller said, “It far more than compensates for this petty pilfering by the wholesale war it carries on against the various insects that affect our fruit trees and vegetables”.

The silver-eye is a small olive–green bird with white rings around the eyes. They have a fine tapered bill and a brush tipped tongue like the Tui and Korimako, the bellbird, for drinking nectar. There are many species in Africa, southern Asia, and the south western Pacific, but it is the Tasmanian sub–Australian species which migrates to the eastern states of the Australian mainland in winter which colonised New Zealand. They were recorded in New Zealand as early as 1832 but it was not until 1856 that they arrived in very large numbers. It is assumed that a storm caught a migrating flock in Australia and diverted them here. The Maori name, Tauhou, means “stranger”.

Their success as a species has probably a lot to do with their varied diet which is mainly comprised of insects, fruit and nectar, but they will also readily take fat, cooked meat, bread and sugar water from bird tables.

They are delightful, busy little birds and are strongly territorial and are often seen fluttering their wings aggressively at another bird. I have seen them cuddling up in pairs on a branch busy preening and feeding each other. With their white ringed eyes set close together, they look so much like clowns. And then to see them with a bright red cotoneaster berry in their beaks, the picture is complete.

The Persecution of rooks in New Zealand

2010-12-02T16:43:00.000-08:00

On the local radio throughout this spring, Greater Wellington Regional Council was once again asking people to report on rookeries in the area. This pursuit of rooks brings into question Regional Council's pest strategies especially in relation to birds.

Rooks are a minor agricultural pest, certainly no worse than say yellowhammers, so why is one being pursued and not the other? It would seem that one of requirements of the Biosecurity Act is that pest control must be cost effective, so the yellowhammer is too numerous and widespread to eradicate but the rook is apparently a viable target for eradication. Both birds were introduced from Europe in the 19th century, as bio-control agents. These birds are not a threat to native or endemic species.

In perusing the voluminous amount of data on Regional Council pest strategies on line, I have managed to glean that over a period of twenty years 2002-2022 at a cost of $60,000 a year it is proposed to eradicate the rook. Part of that budget goes towards putting up helicopters to find the rookeries.

There is no similar proposal to eradicate more serious pests such as mustelids or rats as like the yellowhammer they are not cost effective. Possums are dealt with because of necessity for tb control.

However, there is an operational budget for the control of pests, cats, mustelids, rats, in a buffer zone around Mount Bruce, the wildlife sanctuary in the Wairarapa. The budget for one year 2007-2008 was $34,300. I was not able to glean what the long term strategy is for the buffer zone.

Now in looking at all this, the logic somehow escapes me. To eradicate the rook, a minor agricultural pest on a par with yellowhammers, will cost 1.2 million over 20 years. Given what has happened to the Kiwi at Mount Bruce, the losses from mustelid attacks, should we not be spending that money on increased pest control in the buffer zone around Mount Bruce and leaving the poor rook alone?

Black fantails and and white blackbirds

2010-11-18T16:59:00.001-08:00

I have been asked on several occasions about black fantails in Greytown. Indeed one of my reporters was a bit afraid he might have been imbibing too much and was very much reassured when I said that yes, we do have some black fantails in Greytown.

I have seen black fantails down Hawk Street, Wood Street, Mole Street and even near the park on Kuratawhiti Street, usually quite happily paired with a pied fantail.

There are three plumage phases or morphs in fantails: the pied phase has a grey head, white eyebrow, brown back and yellow under parts. The chest is banded and the tail is mainly white. The juvenile phase is similar but has a browner body and indistinct body markings. The black phase is overall sooty black with a white spot behind the eye. The black fantail is not regarded as a sub species but is a genetic colour variation within the species, like black sheep. They breed freely with pied fantails.

Black phase fantails are found mainly in the South Island and are quite rare in the North Island. In all the twenty-five or so years I lived in the Bay of Plenty I never saw one, so we are quite privileged in Greytown. Why they are more numerous in the South Island is a matter for speculation. The darker colour may be selected for its survival value in the colder climate.

The other birds that get some comment are the blackbirds down Wood street which often have some white patches on them. It is not altogether uncommon to see perfectly white blackbirds. These are usually leucistic birds, not albinos. I have also seen a perfectly white Tui.

Leucism is caused by a mutation that prevents melanin from being properly expressed in feathers. The plumage color changes may be white patches, paler overall plumage that looks faint, diluted or bleached, and overall white plumage.
There are distinct differences between albino and leucistic birds. Leucism affects only the bird’s feathers, and typically only those with melanin pigment – usually dark feathers. A leucistic bird with different colors may show some colors brightly, especially red, orange or yellow, while feathers that should be brown or black are instead pale or white. Some leucistic birds, however, can lose all the pigment in their feathers and may appear pure white.
Albinism, on the other hand, affects all the pigments, and albino birds show no color whatsoever in their feathers. Furthermore, an albino mutation also affects the bird’s other pigments in the skin and eyes, and albino birds show pale pink or reddish eyes, legs, feet and a pale bill, while leucistic birds have normally colored eyes, legs, feet and bills.

Kotare, the Kingfisher

2010-11-16T09:15:00.000-08:00

I heard the old familiar piping of Kotare, the kingfisher, this morning. I do occasionally see a kingfisher, always solitary, usually along Wood Street, in Greytown, but nothing like the large numbers I used to see around Ohiwa Harbour in the eastern Bay of Plenty. There they would congregate during the winter, sitting on power lines, waiting for crabs to emerge from their holes in the mud flats at low tide. A concentration of kingfishers indeed! In the summer they would disperse up the river valleys to nest.

I do wonder if they used to be more numerous around here when frogs and tadpoles were commonly found in ponds and cattle troughs around the farms or even in backyard ponds. Alas, the green bell frog is seldom seen these days, something no one seems to lament as they are an Australian import. However, some of our birds have suffered from their demise, notably the kingfisher, the herons and the bitterns. With the loss of the native fishery with the introduction of trout, these birds no doubt took advantage of the introduced species. Birds do not distinguish between native and introduced.

The kingfisher species, Halcyon sanctus, is found in New Guinea, Australia, Tasmania, New Caledonia, the Solomon, Kermadec, Lord Howe, Norfolk and Loyalty Islands. The New Zealand sub-species, vagans, is distinguished from the Australian sub-species by its larger size and broader bill and generally by the distinctiveness of its green and blue colours.

Halcyon is the Greek word for kingfisher and refers to a bird fabled to breed about the time of the winter solstice in a nest floating on the sea and to charm the wind and waves so that the sea was then specially calm, hence “halcyon days”. The specific name of sanctus, the Sacred Kingfisher, was, according to the ornithologist W.R.B Oliver, bestowed on the species as far back as 1782 because of the veneration paid to the bird in some Pacific Islands.

According Oliver, it is a fearless bird and readily attacks mammals and birds of its own size and larger. “Starlings are driven away, red billed gulls put to flight, a Tui killed, cats and dogs blinded in one eye and even weasels attacked. Every kind of small animal is attacked, killed and eaten by the kingfisher. The mouse is a first favourite and the bird’s sharp eyes and quick actions are usually effective when one comes into view. Before being swallowed the victim is pulped and its bones broken by battering on the kingfisher’s perch. Small birds such as Tauhou, the white eye, are eaten and lizards where they are plentiful. Larger insects also form part of the diet.” However, around here, I have mostly observed them taking nothing more than worms and insects so I must take their bad reputation on trust.

They nest in a burrow either in a clay bank or a tree, very often a decaying willow. To start a tunnel they sit on a branch slightly above and several metres away from the site and fly straight at it, neck outstretched and uttering a peculiar whirring call, and strike it forcedly with the bill tip. They continue until the hole is big enough to perch in and scoop out. The nesting burrow can be as much as 24cm long and will be used year after year. The female does most of the brooding while the male supplies the food. They are bad housekeepers and the nests are often quite filthy.

Elsdon Best expressed some surprise that Maori never used the feathers of Kotare for decorative cloaks, considering the bird’s very colourful feathers. However, he also said some Maori were prejudiced against them because it was observed that they ate lizards which are regarded as guardians of the mauri of the forest.

The decline and fall of sparrows

2010-11-13T15:16:00.000-08:00

Why have house sparrows declined so dramatically, asks Bob Brockie (NZ Dompost, Monday, October 11, 2010)

Sparrows cannot live by bread alone. Chicks need protein in order to mature and survive. Based on research conducted in the UK it has been shown that sparrow chicks are starving in their nests because their parents can not find enough insects to feed them. However is this likely to be true in NZ and in other parts of the world? And is it just sparrows that are in decline?

The 2oth century biologist JBS Haldane said that “God has an inordinate fondness for beetles”. This is in reference to there being over 400,000 known species of beetles in the world, and that this represents 40% of all known insect species (at the time of the quote, it was over half of all known insect species).

According to the UK's Invertebrate Conservation Trust, at least 250 of Britain's 4,000 plus species of beetle have not been seen since 1970. This is over and above the general decline in beetles. Two-thirds of Britain's moth species have declined in the past 40 years, some by enormous amounts. Mayflies appear to have dropped in abundance by about two-thirds in the past 50 years.

This decline must be impacting hugely on birds. There are various estimates in the decline in birds, and some birds are doing better than others. RSPB conducts yearly surveys of garden birds in the UK and these surveys indicate a general decline of around 20 per cent in the last five years.

What is the situation in NZ? Are insects in decline here as they are elsewhere? We just don't seem to know, but how many years is it since we were “bugged” by insects splattered on our car windscreens? And are Mynahs still to be found up north prospecting for insects which have smashed into cars on highways? Are Mynahs in decline? Does anyone care? Just as noone cares at the disappearance of the green bell frog as it is not a native.

Generally, are our birds in decline? The OSNZ atlas which comes out every ten years records the presence of birds in any area but not whether or not there has been a decline. Garden bird surveys have been initated but have not been going long enough to tell us much yet. The native birds seem to be holding their own, probably due to increased predator control and the planting of native plant species. But will this situation last? Until we do some serious monitoring, we will not know.

For the last five years I have lived in Greytown in the Wairarapa and every summer the back door is left open, the lights on, and in all that time I have not seen a solitary huhu beetle and very few moths. How is this impacting on the morepork?

We spray the house for flies every summer and for spiders so they will not engulf the house with their webs and in doing so deprive birds, and particularly sparrows, of important protein for their chicks. We kill everything that moves in the back yard. We “clean up” our yards so that there is no refuge for wetas or other wildlife. Landscape gardeners create gardens which may have many native plants and are easy to care for but with hardly an insect, bee, or bird in sight.

District councils, golf clubs and bowling clubs use pesticides to exterminate worms on their sports fields without a thought for the impact on blackbirds and thrushes. So it goes on with species disappearing with hardly anyone noticing.

However, having said all this, sparrows in this neck of the woods anyway seem to have increased in numbers compared with two years ago, although still at very low numbers compared with ten years ago.

Welcome Swallows

2010-11-12T13:57:00.001-08:00

The welcome swallow is something of a rare bird within Greytown itself but I have seen it in numbers out of town, up the top of Wood Street and along the Ruamahunga River. I've also seen a solitary bird along North Street and recently a couple this town end of Wood Street.

I've often wondered why they do not appear to have taken up residence in the town itself because even in my back yard there are good warm places for them to nest and shelter and I would have thought anywhere where the fantail prevails, so too would the swallow. So I was greatly interested when one of my neighbours recently told me about of pair of birds which were regularly visiting his shed off the Main Street. They were indeed welcome swallows. Hopefully they will nest there this coming spring.

The welcome, or house swallow, was self introduced from Australia in the 1950s so it is categorised as a fully protected native bird. Birds do keep coming across the Tasman from Australia. As well as Australasia, the bird breeds in Southern Asia from India to Malaysia and the western Pacific. The spread of the swallow has been spectacular and they are now a very common bird throughout New Zealand, although much more numerous in the warmer north.

They are small, graceful, dark blue and white birds, with variable amounts of rusty red on the head and breast. They have streamlined bodies with a short neck and long, pointed wings. The tail is a deeply forked “swallowtail”. Their flight is graceful and rapid as they hawk for insects on the wing. They are birds of open country, hunting over lakes, rivers and grassland and are often seen perching on power lines like so many clothes pegs.

They are in competition with Piwakawaka, the fantail, which also enjoys small insects on the wing but they seem to live happily enough together, although expert thinking says that no two species can occupy the same ecological niche without the demise of one. By my observations, it seems the fantail is better able to cope with winter and violent storms by its ability to use safe roosting places. However I do think the welcome swallow may now outnumber the fantail.

Having had the opportunity of watching swallows closely, I can say with certainty that the nest is made of small pellets of mud. The nest is built up line by line, the mud mixed with short lengths of grass to give greater adherence to the structure and lined with hair, wool and feathers. In shape the nest resembles a shallow bowl and is completed in just a few days with both birds sharing the workload. They particularly like bridges to nest under but will choose also to nest in garages and under the eaves of houses.

The Australian bird, like its European counterpart, is migratory. Indeed it is thought that during its yearly migration to and from Tasmania, the birds were blown off course by storms and so ended up here. The welcome swallow shows no signs of being migratory here in New Zealand.

The European swallows are regarded as harbingers of spring and the ancient Greeks had festivals to welcome their arrival. The proverb, “one swallow does not a summer make”, is a pretty near literal translation of an ancient Greek proverb. In the ancient world, the birds were particularly associated with the household gods and their presence was looked upon as fortuitous. Conversely, any harm done to them could bode evil for the household.

Greytown's birds - the Shining cuckoo

2010-11-12T10:24:00.000-08:00

Here it is November already and I have yet to hear the shining cuckoo in Greytown. The Birding News Group reported a shining cuckoo in the Rimutaka Forest Park on September 21 and a friend reported them at the top of Wood Street in late October, which is about when I would have expected them here, as it has been late October in other years that I have first heard them. The extremely cold October weather may have deterred their moving south.

Talking to someone recently, they said they did not realise we had cuckoos here in New Zealand. Indeed, we have two, the shining and the long-tailed cuckoo, both migratory. The long-tailed cuckoo will only usually be seen outside the deep bush while it is in transit in the spring and autumn, when they very often are found dead after crashing into a window. (As I was writing this I had an email from soomeone living nearby in the Waiohine Gorge saying they had a long-tailed cuckoo crashed into the window!) But the shining cuckoo is everywhere, largely because its main dupe the grey warbler is very widespread.

Shining cuckoos are heard before they are seen. Their call starts like someone whistling for their dog and then tails off into a series of downward notes like a long sigh. Trying to follow the call to identify the bird can be a frustrating experience as it is very deceptive. The bird can be quite close without one knowing as the call starts off quietly as if a long way away, so they are difficult to actually sight.

However, I have been lucky in that they were want to frequent the kowhai trees in the garden on the farm where I used to live in the eastern Bay of Plenty and so I often watched them meticulously searching through the tree at my kitchen window for the larvae of the kowhai moth. Here in Greytown I have not seen them at all, just heard them.

The bird is a bit larger than a sparrow and is wonderfully marked with an iridescent greenish blue coat above a striped off-white body. Their diet consists almost entirely of insects and their larvae and includes the hairy caterpillar of the magpie moth which is avoided by all other birds.

There is probably no doubt that the scarcity of insects in the winter has been behind the evolutionary drive for the shining cuckoo to migrate. They leave around February or March and follow a route north which is not clear. On leaving their winter quarters many, if not most, birds, make their way down the eastern Australian coast before flying across the Tasman to New Zealand. Immature birds may travel the same route in reverse while adults may make a more direct flight of over 3000 km over the Pacific Ocean when trade winds could give some assistance. They have been recorded on Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands during the migration seasons.

Like other cuckoos, the shining cuckoo neither builds its nest nor rears its young. It leaves this job to the grey warbler who manages to rear one clutch of its own before the cuckoo arrives here around September from the Solomon Islands and the Bismarck Archipelago.

If the cuckoo’s migration path is a bit of a mystery, how it’s egg gets into the grey warbler’s nest is another. The grey warblers build a covered, hanging nest with a small circular entrance which is just too small for the cuckoo to enter without damaging the nest. However, in the September, 1991, Nortornis, the official publication of the New Zealand Ornithological Society, there is a photo of a cuckoo carrying an egg in its beak. In my view, this seems the most likely way in which the egg is placed in the warbler’s nest.

The birds that come to Greytown are those most likely born here. When one thinks of all the hazards between here and the islands, then it is not difficult to calculate that we could easily lose these birds locally. If just two or three pairs of birds come to Greytown, they have to breed successfully every year in order to make up for the losses incurred while migrating.

Climate change will also effect the future of these birds, but perhaps not negatively as a warmer climate may allow them to stay on through the winter rather than migrate.

Maori tradition believed the shining cuckoo wintered in Hawaiki, which indicates that they were well aware of the bird’s migratory habits. However, it was probably from observing the long tailed cuckoo, Koekoea, which winters chiefly in Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Cook, Society and Tuamotu groups, which lead the voyaging ancestors of Maori to believe that there was land to the south.

Ko te uri au i te whenakonako
I te koekoea.
E riro nei ma te tataihore e whangai.

I am the offspring of the bronze cuckoo,
Of the long-tailed cuckoo,
Left here for the white-head to feed.

Maori and European tradition regarding cuckoos is not so different as is revealed by a song of Shakespeare’s: “The cuckoo then, on every tree, mocks married men; for thus sings he, cuckoo!”

Call of the Shining Cuckoo may be heard here: http://www.nzbirds.com/birds/pipiwharauroa.html

Email: narena@nzbirds.com

Splatometer

2005-01-28T08:52:00.000-08:00

Walking my dog every day around this small Wairarapa town, it seems to me there are very few insects around; the environment seems so sterile somehow. Inspecting my car after driving around the countryside, the windscreens and grill are relatively free of dead insects, no splattered moths and squashed flies and wasps and bees. Are insects disappearing? And what might be the consequences for our birds? When did I last see a stick insect, a dragonfly, a lady bird, or one of those brilliant native hunting wasps? And are moths as numerous as they used to be? So what is happening? Does anyone care? After all bugs are everyone’s bug bear!

Yesterday I watched a thrush stumble away from my dog, making me think that perhaps it had picked up a poisoned slug, having watched a neighbor put out slug bait the day before. And every night I watch the television advertisements encouraging people to slaughter everything that moves in and around the house. We have got very efficient at destroying bugs without a doubt.

How many people give the birds or other natural predators a chance to control the bugs? Does anyone educate the public about it? Birds will go a long way towards doing the job if given half a chance. The use of pesticides has never struck me as a very intelligent solution to a problem as the first thing that chemicals do is kill off the natural predators. Plants and insects have been waging chemical war fare since the beginning of time, trying to outwit each other in the evolutionary game. Plants produce the most amazing toxins to ward off insects. Rather than have gone the down the road of producing pesticides, it’s a pity our scientists have not learned to work with the plant’s ability to do the job itself.

But I have not been alone in wondering about that state of our insects. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) says species like tree sparrows and corn buntings are on the decline. It wants to know whether the apparent decline in the number of bees, ladybirds, moths and other insects has anything to do with this. . The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’ (RSPB) Big Bug Count, staged throughout June 2004, aimed to paint an accurate picture of the population of the dreaded midge and the UK’s other 23,000 insect species. Nearly 40,000 motorists, including some 2,500 north of the border, attached a Splatometer - a cardboard grid to aid counting - on to their number plate and counted the number of "splats". They counted a total 324,814 insects at an average rate of only one splat every five miles.

Jonathan Osborne, RSPB Scotland’s Big Bug Count coordinator, said the survey - believed to be the first of its kind in the world - would form a baseline against which the organisation could compare data from future years. "Because this is the first survey of its kind, we can't yet say definitively that insect numbers have declined, but something worrying is going on, and potentially there will be an impact on our bird population. Britain's 23,000 species of insects are their bread and butter and the consequences of a decline have serious implications.”

Should we be initiating a similar count here in New Zealand?

Credo

2005-01-26T22:23:00.000-08:00

High summer and everything intent upon breeding and increasing their numbers. Bugs everywhere! The "summer" flies are intent upon taking the food before it reaches my mouth. The Mason wasps, mud daubers, are loudly building their nests, not only under chairs but also in the folds of the drapes, while spiders threaten to totally envelop the cottage with their webs.
In the evening, if I dare to leave the windows open, I am bombarded by moths and click beetles and bugged by Huhu beetles. Raucous cicadas rudely awaken me in the morning while white butterfly caterpillars chomp their way through the cabbages.

But then there are the gorgeous and the exotic creatures which stop me in my tracks and dissipate any hostility towards the pestiferous. They send me off to the books to try and make an identification.

Gorgeous steely blue lady birds which I can always find in the lime tree. A tiny native bee in the hay paddocks which I have yet to identify and a strange creature I always find on the Corokia shrubs. Green and yellow with a touch of white and with two "horns", at first glance it looks like a beetle but when disturbed it reveals itself to be a spider. I'm still working on finding out just who it is.

The wisteria vine is utterly infested with another strange creature which I have actually managed to identify as the larvae of an Australian green plant hopper. They bear a tuft of whitish hairs at the end of their bodies and jump a considerable distance when disturbed.
Why this desire, this compunction, a friend has asked, to name things, to identify them?
To show respect, is my response.

How many species are there in the world today? Most estimates fall between ten and 100 million. It is indeed remarkable that we in this modern world obsessed with measuring things, do not know to within an order of magnitude how many species we share the globe with, says Richard Leakey in his book The Sixth Extinction.

We have a good estimate of how many stars are in our galaxy. We know how many nucleotide bases constitute the human genetic blueprint and we can calculate to within a few hours when a comet will collide with Jupiter yet we cannot put a secure number on current species diversity. It is not through lack of knowing but through a lack of commitment. Governments have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the systematic study of stars but only a tiny fraction of that sum on the systematic study of nature here on Earth.

Of the estimates of ten to 100 million species that may exist on this planet only about 1.4 million have been recorded and identified. Even here in New Zealand the vast majority of species are unnamed and unknown. However, if we did make the commitment to "aim at nothing less than a full count, a complete catalogue of life on earth", as Edward O Wilson urges, we would fail, as species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate. It is estimated that half the species will become extinct by the middle this century.

However, there have been at least five occasions in the very long history of the planet when nearly two thirds of its living creatures disappeared from the face of the earth. The end-Permian extinction, 225 million years ago, extirpated more than 95 per cent of marine animal species and almost as many on land. Virtually all scientists who are studying biological diversity agree that we are now in the midst of the sixth great crisis, this time precipitated entirely by man, Homo sapiens.

The sad fact of our history is that no matter where we have gone, destruction and extinction of species has followed. This is not just a matter of our recent history. When primitive man crossed the Bering Straits into North America, destruction of all the great herbivores in both North and South America followed. The movement of the human species into the Pacific Islands, Australia and New Zealand was also followed by mass extinction of species, in our case the great flightless birds among others. European expansion in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries merely accelerated the process.

With the continuing destruction of habitat in the face of industrial and agricultural expansion, both of which are aspects of continued population growth, the process of species extinction in the twentieth century has accelerated even more, to the point where our own future may well be threatened.

We have a moral duty to know as much as can be known about, "the endless forms most beautiful", as Darwin has said, with which we share this earth. It has become my credo, for once identified, once known and named, one cannot easily deny a creature's existence, cannot so easily destroy them.

Greytown County Almanac

2005-01-22T14:55:00.000-08:00

Is environmentalism dead?