Kererū – the New Zealand wood pigeon (and the refugee crisis).

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 93

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

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 27^th September  then jump onto www.greatkererucount.nz    And record it.

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. 

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. 

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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The critically endangered New Zealand Parera - Part Two

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 92

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Stop Press 

Two thumbs-up for Forest and Bird

Followers of these commentaries will be pleased to know that Forest & Bird  has just published an article on the destruction of this Ramati Beach dune lake in the Spring edition of their magazine. You can read it and then we would encourage you to join. F&B are our leading conservation organisation - the engine room of conservation in New Zealand.

And now back to New Zealand Parera.

 

We were talking about the problems of making reliable observations about behavioural  differences between parera, parera-cross and introduced mallard ducks. Another complicating factor is that not only do the birds look very similar, (especially in adolescence), but their behaviours change where they have access to public ponds.

On the wharf and on the make - domesticated mallard pair

We were observing wild populations of parera-cross birds. We judged they were wild because unlike mallards we couldn’t get close to them, though another indicator was that we very rarely saw parera-cross birds at public ponds. This isn’t because they were rare however, but because they haven’t become domesticated into public areas, like the mallard. (Because of there familiarity with mallard on public ponds, it is rare to find a New Zealander who knows the difference between these two species, or is even aware that we have a local native duck.)

The wild parera-cross birds at the lake, seemed to form a hapu grouping of up to a dozen or more birds, but they can lose half that number in May when the duck-shooting season begins. (It speaks for itself that while Fish & Game undertake research into mallards they fail to mention or show any regard for the plight of parera for which they and their predecessors are responsible).   

A day's spoil - Enough is never  enough when it comes to humans  killing animals 

We aren’t aware of  research on this subject, but our hunch is that these parera-cross birds share a lot of DNA. They are cousins and know each other and the areas they frequent. They don’t just fly around at random looking for food and a mate.    

Gender diverse - a parera cross hapu

With mallard however, it is the males that form into groups through spring and into summer. They hook up in gangs of four or five and there is a definite pecking order. To our great surprise these groups never seemed to include grey headed parera-cross males, though we often saw grey headed parera-cross males, fighting with these green headed ducks.   Parera are usually smaller than mallard but parera-cross are larger than their pure-bred cousins and can hold their own, especially if there are females involved.

Parera-cross mallard standoff - Raumati Beach dune lake

And the role of the females as we have previously noted, is crucial. We have seen females flirting (successfully)  to attract the male of their choice, and trying to move in on an already partnered male. More somberly they have also abandoned ducklings following the attentions of an insistent male. There are good and not so good  mums (and dads)  in every species it seems, though once attached, the female will usually stick to her mate through thick and thin.

Parera-cross defending mate 

Yet the genetic lines between parera and other species also appear to be transgressed all the time because  a more general interbreeding between these waterbird species seems to be taking place. Once again it is hard to get clear consistent evidence, but we have seen male parera-cross with shoveller tail feathers – a parera-cross male paired up with female grey teal with the two nurturing five adolescent parera-teal ducklings. 

Parera male with grey teal family

Then a female mallard with a grey teal head who was obviously being shunned by her mallard compatriots – but then more alarmingly, a very rare and endangered female brown teal-pateke paired up with a mallard male.    

Most striking of all is one incident that didn't involve interbreeding, but the fostering by a mallard female of an orphaned NZ Scaup. Scaup are diving ducks and this chick caused havoc on a public  pond  when it began leading its  siblings astray along with all the other ducklings on the pond, as they followed it in diving underwater.  It all looked like great fun to everyone save the mothers of two other broods on the pond. They were very annoyed with one marching her brood down to the local creek to remove her youngsters from harms way…       

Track we were listening to while posting this  Standing On The Corner - The Four Lads  For those of you who think music began with Straight Outa Compton here's some pretty marginal stuff from mainstream midfifties. It's white doo wop with an edge...

Standing on the corner

Watching all the girls go by

Standing on the corner

Underneath the springtime sky

Brother, you can't go to jail

For what you're thinking

Or for the woo look in your eye

You're only standing on the corner

Watching all the girls

Watching all the girls

Watching all the girls

Go by

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