A Korimako - Bellbird for the New Year

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 57

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

School is out down here in the South Pacific, and will remain so for a month or more as the weather makes up its mind to remain hot and dusky; and there’s a stampede to the beach. And Midnight Collective are also down there, putting together a post with a film on the pied shag colony that’s taken up residence at Raumati Beach. In the meantime here is a photo of a bellbird kindly sent to us by a supporter – Bill Studd.





Bellbird in foxglove -Akatarewa, Tararuas - photo Bill Studd 

This was taken up in the Tararuas, at the back of the town of Waikanae,  at around 1000ft asl. The climate up there is very much sharper than down on the coast with a higher rainfall and two or three snowfalls a year though these birds seem to be doing well enough, especially as Bill keeps a pest trapping programme going on his forestry-farm block, where the photo was taken. Like the kereru (native pigeon), these birds keep near the extant bush and don’t seem to venture on the town side of the railway that runs along the bottom of this range.  This one is getting a little drunk on the wild foxgloves that have established in cleared areas around the bush and along the waterways..   

They are mostly known for their singing, famously described by Cook's naturalist Joseph Banks as deafening (in Queen Charlotte Sound Marlborough) -1770. For shame! We watched one in puzzlement once, in a plum tree, in the upper reaches of Waikanae,  pushing its beak into every plum  as she tested them for ripeness. It took us a while to finally decide that she wasn't  a waxeye (too big and no white ring around the eye) but a fledgling bellbird that hadn’t yet grown its full stand of tail feathers. 

Track we were listening too while posting this - the peerless Billie Holiday on Gershwin's - Summertime (and the livin' is easy) If only! 

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