Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 93
Actively
supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds
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| Nodding off - Kereru taking midmorning nap |
The kererū
census for 2015 is under way and we would encourage everyone if you spot a kererū up until 27th September then jump onto www.greatkererucount.nz And record it.
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| Tairere berries |
The kererū
is our large and very pretty native pigeon. It is crucial to the survival of
many of our forest trees including tawa, tairere and matai, because it is large
enough to devour then disperse their large seeds. It provides a key link in
forest regeneration.
These birds are delightful to watch this
time of year for they can be seen looping into the air and, swooping down,
which is all part of courtship behaviour –males impressing females. And while
they look rather cumbersome birds, we’ve seen them flying through dense forest
at alarming speeds. You can’t quite believe what you’re seeing and think they
must come to harm, yet never seem to.
They also play an important role in Maoritanga. We witnessed this a few years ago when bussing a sceptical Iwi group in to
assess whether they could support protection for a forest reserve. As their senior Kuia stepped from the bus a kereru came out of the
forest and swooped over her head. ‘I’ve seen enough,’ she declared. ‘You have
my support.’ Then climbed back onto the bus. This dissolved all the tension,
though there were still some feisty negotiations to manage.
The female kererū
are very good mothers and when they leave their youngsters they can often be
heard calling back to them, with the young ones replying from the nest.
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| Kereru on nikau over back fence |
Like
this one they can often be seen in the towns, though they tend to stay up near
forested areas. We seldom see them
down here on the coast but there is a sizable population on the other side of
town, up in the Tararua foothills.
In this short clip a kererū is feeding on nikau berries right in the
centre of a built up area.
Sound track is Woody Guthrie’s Deportee . by Cisco
Houston –
Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.
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| Crossing into Hungary - Aljazeera |
Every day we have seen the refugee crisis
worsening in Europe and every day the evidence of how much the world hasn’t
changed since Guthrie penned this classic migrant protest song. Those shameful
behaviours have been matched over here in the Antipodes with the Government turning its back
until public outrage began to build at which point it offered to do the very
minimum it thought it could get away with. And it has got away with it. The Nation’s conscience
has been quelled allowing the citizens to get back to their latte's, internet shopping, and gossip columns. So here we take a vote of thanks to the Germans for reminding the World how human
beings can and should behave.
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