Tasman Every Day

Weka (Gallirallus australis australis) eat lots of things: fruit or veg, slug or spider, all are things suitable for filling a weka’s stomach. This one has found itself a snail.

This fairly young western weka (Gallirallus australis australis) is learning to hunt for food in the undergrowth of the beech forests of Mt Arthur.

One of the things I love about NZ beech forests is the variety that grows on the forest floor: the soft mosses, the pale lichens, all the different tiny plants and fungi reaching for the sky. This weka (Gallirallus australis australis) walks about on a soft bed of mosses, looking for food, keeping a close eye on its nearby chicks.

This is another pic of the female bellbird (Anthornis melanura melanura) I posted last week, spotted looking for insects on the track going from Arthur Hut down to Flora Hut. You can see in this photo the typical bellbird markings, including the dark stripe on the wing.

This bellbird (Anthornis melanura melanura) is a male and in his olive green colouring, he blends in well with the forest canopy. Because they blend in so well, you’ll often hear bellbirds more than you’ll see them.

The track down from the Arthur Hut to the Flora Hut includes an exposed scrubby bit, and it was quite a surprise to see this bellbird (Anthornis melanura melanura) feeding here, as usually they’re seen in the forest canopy. This is a female, you can tell from the colours and from the pale stripe running from the bottom of her bill over her cheek. She’s caught herself something leggy: you can see the legs sticking out from her beak. The female bellbird lacks the vivid green-yellow colouring of the male, and from this angle, there’s no green on her at all. She may have chicks nearby, as bellbirds chicks are raised on a diet made up mostly of insects. Adults mainly feed on nectar and fruits, and you can understand, maybe, why they feed the chicks insects: imagine filling your mouth with nectar and keeping it there while flying back to the nest… Ooops, kids, no food, it slipped down my throat.

This is the mountain neinei (Dracophyllum traversii) in flower. The mountain neinei is one weird tree, with tangled, twisted branches topped with wild-haired clusters of leaves. Then in spring and summer, they sprout these spiky, conical flowers, which gives the mountain neinei another name: the pineapple tree. Mountain neinei grow at high altitude, towards the bush line, and there’s a lot of them mixed in with the beech trees on the way up Mt Arthur.

This photo was taken on the track from the Flora carpark to the Arthur Hut, not far from the last bit of the track that goes up to the hut. The straggly looking tree in the foreground is the mountain neinei (Dracophyllum traversii) and the trees covering the nearby ridge are beech, and above the treeline the marble that makes up Mt Arthur is exposed. It is, appropriately, known as “Arthur Marble”.

This western weka (Gallirallus australis australis) chick is a bit older than the one I posted yesterday, its fuzz is starting to look almost feathery and has turned brown. This chick was foraging, along with another, on one side of the track going up to Arthur Hut, while its parents were on the other side of the track. Weka often aren’t too bothered about being around humans, although you’d kind of expect them to be a bit more anxious when it comes to their babies. The adults on the other side of the track were giving the occasional warning cluck, which sounds a bit like the beat of a drum, but the two chicks really weren’t too concerned about me being so close. In fact, when I stepped closer to take some photos, this chick just sat down and posed.