The deep, dark eyes of the South Island robin/kakaruwai (Petroica australis) seem to drink in everything around them. They’re such curious things, always wanting to know what you’re doing in the bush. In summer time, during the breeding season, male and female work cooperatively in looking after the eggs and offspring. The male brings the female food while she’s on the nest, and once the eggs hatch, the male and female take turns feeding the chicks. Once the chicks leave the nest, both parents take responsibility for feeding them for another few weeks, until they’re able to forage for themselves. Despite this cooperation in taking care of the chicks, male and female actively compete for food year round. A male will be aggressive in keeping a female (his mate!) away from food sources, but will bring her food while she’s nesting. Robins cache food, and male and female will steal from each otherís caches. Maybe this curiosity us humans find so endearing is nothing more than deep suspicion, the robin saying, “You’re not here to steal my food are you?”
The Lakeside Track at Lake Rotoiti goes along the western side of the lake to a hut at the point where the Travers River enters the lake. The forest is beech forest with an understorey of ferns and mosses. This is also sandfly country: repellent definitely required!
On one hand, you have New Zealand’s most common coastal gull, the red-billed gull. On the other hand, you have this guy, the black-billed gull (Larus bulleri), which is not just New Zealand’s most threatened gull species, but the world’s most threatened. Their numbers are still okay, but the rate of decline is a serious worry: The black-billed gull’s stronghold is Southland, and there its population has declined by 80% in the last thirty years. This bird was photographed at Lake Rotoiti, in Nelson Lakes National Park. Gulls are often thought of as seabirds, but the black-billed gull is more likely to be found around freshwater: rivers, lakes, marshes, pastures. They breed on the gravel beds of braided rivers, which provide them with a clear space to nest on and easy access to a reliable food source. In 2016, a dairy farm in North Canterbury hosted a colony of 300 black-billed gull nests, which fledged 440 chicks. In the Tasman District, black-billed gulls occasionally breed at Farewell Spit and Rototai, but not in large numbers.
This is my favourite tūī (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae novaeseelandiae) shot from 2018. He looks like he’s spent a lot of time slicking his hair back into a pompadour that’s kind of fallen flat. Tūī are nectar and seed eaters and so are important in the propagation of many New Zealand native plants.
This little penguin/kororā isn’t shy, it’s sleeping, and I’m taking a clue from this little blue in that I’ll be taking a break from posting for a couple of weeks. Until then, here’s a little bit about little blues: We call them “little blue penguins” for the colours of their dorsal feathers, although some can be more grey than blue. They’re the most common penguin around New Zealand coasts, and they’re also found in Australia, where they’re called fairy penguins. Little blues come ashore to sleep at night; this one was photographed at Totaranui Beach towards the end of the day.
New Zealand’s smallest bird, the rifleman/tītipounamu (Acanthisitta chloris), feeds exclusively on insects. They browse native forests, going up and down trees, systematically hunting down their tiny prey. This rifleman on the track to Mt Arthur Hut has taken an interest in what’s inhabiting the mosses and lichens on the underside of a branch (probably a beech).
These rifleman explore all angles. A daring acrobatic feat? How hard can it really be to hang on to the side of a tree with your feet if you weigh only 6 grams? Oh wait, he’s only using one foot. Awesome!
Then there’s this third pic, which confused my brain when I was going through this series of photos. Yes, it is actually the right way up. When you weigh just 6 grams, does gravity really matter?
This is a black swan/kakīānau (Cygnusatratus) with cygnet. The black swan has a rather confusing history in New Zealand. Black swans are widespread in Southeast Asia and Australia, and were introduced to New Zealand in the 1860s. In 1889, bones of a “New Zealand swan” were discovered in a cave in the Christchurch suburb of Sumner. The New Zealand swan and the black swan were regarded as separate as the New Zealand birds had slightly larger bones than the Australian ones. A study in 1998, however, concluded that the New Zealand swan was simply an isolated population of the Australian species that had been hunted to extinction before Europeans arrived.Then in 2017, a genetic analysis of fossils found that the New Zealand birds were, in fact, a separate species.
Skylark or pipit,it can be hard to tell. They’re both streaky brown birds, roughly the same size, who like hanging out in the same habitats. Pipits are more strongly striped, and the dark stripe through the eye generally distinguishes it fromthe skylark. But how do you tell unless you have them side by side? I was leaning towards skylark (Alauda arvensis) because I’m pretty sure this can in no way be called a strong eye stripe, but nzbirdsonline.org.nz gives more hints. Skylarks crouch and fly when disturbed (as opposed to the walking or running behaviour of pipits) and the photo caught this skylark as he was starting to crouch. And fly.
Wingspan-wise, the Caspian tern/taranui (Hydroprogne caspia) is around the same size as the black-backed gull. The Caspian tern is not only New Zealand’s largest tern species, it is also the world’s largest tern species. The black cap and black legs are typical of adults, although the black cap will fade to grey outside of the breeding season. The chicks are born with a pale orange-yellow bill; the orange traffic-cone version is for grown-up terns.
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