Kapiti Island - New Zealand's native bird reserve 7 - The Kaitiaki Trip

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 107

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

This late summer has caught us by surprise. It’s been very hot, -the temperatures up in the high 20’s tipping over into the 30’s (that’s 85-90 in New York) for four weeks now. But there has also been rain – the widely predicted El Nino drought conditions have not materialised. And now the cyclone season is underway in earnest with Fiji bearing the brunt of Cyclone Winston over the last 3 days while we watch to see if its going to scome our way next.         

Healthy Harbours Porirua 

We have been caught up on a number of projects one of which has been to put a video together for  Healthy Harbours - Porirua. This follows a trip before Christmas of seven youngsters from that region over to Kapiti Island.

Rachel, Te Arepa, Rohan, Rose, Soteria, Hope and E.J. at the Wilkinson Track hihi feeding station.

This is part of their Kaitiaki programme and here is the completed video.

Just to apologize - we are having trouble loading this but you can view it on this link at youtube

A note on kaitiaki will help our overseas  visitors. It is generally translated from Te Reo (the Maori Language) as guardian and that is the intention of the programme – to   promote guardianship of our local environment especially around wetland areas. Rose - The final interviewee in the video gives an impressive account of it. 

But kaitiaki also has a much wider and more personal range of reference to Maori and this includes experiences that aren’t generally considered acceptable in Western cultural eyes. A kaitiaki may attach itself to you in the form of an animal – perhaps a spider, and this is seen as a protective presence. We think of these as supernatural doings and view them with a level-headed skepticism; but it is a perfectly normal part of everyday experience for Maori.

Next post we will get back to the Island but locally its been pleasant to locate this nest – which is just up the wharemauku creek and empty now.

It is a riroriro nest – the grey warbler. These native birds are one of our tiniest and very rare now in this area though we photographed two here last year, so perhaps we have a breeding couple. Both local species of cuckoo will lay an egg in their nest. And one of the most poignant sights in the forest is two see two of these parents diligently trying to feed a long tailed cuckoo fledgling– which is around 10x the size of the ‘foster’ parent.       

 

From the 1959 Forest and Bird publication - New Zealand Forest Inhabiting Birds

Then just as a final point the riroriro is also called the NZ Rainbird…If it is about to rain its song will change. Which is something else we generally retain a skepitical view of – until we hear the evidence…

Track we were listening to while posting this - We have been busy recording  local bee populations over the last month so here is a song to go with all that from Arthur Askey and The Bee Song  

Oh, what a wonderful thing to be, 

A healthy grown up busy busy bee; 

Whiling away all the passing hours

Pinching all the pollen from the cauliflowers.

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Kapiti Island -New Zealand native bird reserve - sojourn 6 - Parera and the gathering of the clans

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 106

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

It is around  this time of the year, in late summer, that you begin to see waterbirds flocking. And we’ve seen two species at it so far, both at the Waikanae Estuary, where 15 or so paradise duck had gathered. These appeared to be youngsters because they were just getting their adult plumage. 

Mallard youngsters at Waikanae estuary

Here also large flock of newby ducks were convening. We counted 60 or so, all mallards, all youngsters, with the males yet to develop their distinctive green heads. 

And still more...

Then we found them again, down  at the Ratanui wetland, where they had converged into a group. They were very nervous in this enclosed space, and took off together soon after we arrived. It is  the first time we had seen two species flocking like this and then flying together.

Middle distance - mallard and paradise duck (30 odd barely discernible)

Taking flight ...

Amy and Stan on Kapiti Island

One indispensable record of Kapiti Island, was penned by early conservators Stan and Amy Wilkinson. Kapiti Diary and Kapiti Bird Sanctuary record their observations from the establishment of the Iisland as a reserve in 1923, through to the 1940’s. 

It was in the 1920’s, before mallards were introduced into this country that they recorded our native duck, Parera, flocking in the strait between the island and the mainland. 

Rare native parera pair  at  Raumati Beach dune lake (now destroyed)

This is an extraordinary record, but a troubling one because this flocking in May was linked to the shooting season.

“On May 2 1926 coming back from the mainland we passed within easy distance of a huge flock about a mile from the beach, and another mob of about equal numbers in the middle of the channel. Although astonished at the numbers an even bigger surprise was in store; for when we had nearly reached the island we passed another flock that made these two look small.  There were thousands and thousands of them in that flock the like of which we have never seen since, nor are likely to. Although the grey duck –parera comes over every shooting season in great numbers these numbers are certainly diminishing. In some years we may see a few hundred sitting on the sea but more often this bird is conspicuous by its absence.”

View from the top of Kapiti Island looking East -foto Ridgway Lythgoe 

The birds were trying to avoid the shotguns of the hunters,  but were failing year by year to do so. So rapacious was the onslaught that by the end of the 1930’s the Government gave in to intense pressure and allowed the restocking of New Zealand with mallard eggs from the US. History has been defined as 'the view of our past as compiled  by the victors', and the history of extinction in this country is no exception. The blame is usually placed on introduced pests, the necessary draining of wetlands, not the rapacious human appetite in killing for sport. And it is this sport that continues to carry the prime responsibility for the annihilation of our native duck.

This has been and continues to be a worldwide phenomena over many many species; though if more account were taken of this kind of delightful observation, made by Amy Wilkinson on Kapiti Island, perhaps they’d be a little less quick on the trigger.

One morning we were endeavouring to get a photograph of a family that were resting in the garden after a meal. The female was standing on a stone keeping guard. We were using a half plate camera and the ducklings paid no attention while the necessary arrangements were made. Turning our eyes to adjust the aperture we were ready but where were the ducklings. They had vanished! During that fraction of time a warning had apparently been conveyed to them in some mysterious manner. We never heard a sound yet here were the little fellows all crouching under the different rock plants and the old duck with her head cocked to one side, watching a harrier sailing lazily overhead. It was really wonderful how those ducklings had hidden themselves so completely, and so quickly, for the plants didn’t provide much effective cover.       

Track we were listening to while posting this…

We had been prevaricating for some time between  Patti Smith  and Van Morrison on this track, but eventually went with Them and  Gloria…

Wanna tell about my baby

Lord, you know she comes around

About five feet four

From her head to the ground

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On Kapiti Island 5- New Zealand's premier conservation reserve Hihi - Stitchbird

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 105

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Hihi male en-song - courtesy DoC

The hihi or stitchbird is one of our most  delightful birds but also one of our most endangered. Originally found throughout the North Island, including on Kapiti Island, they dramatically reduced with the arrival of Europeans in 1840, until by 1885 only a small remnant population was surviving on Little Barrier Island-Te Hauturu-o-Toi. Little Barrier was our first protected wildlife sanctuary (1897) and from here both saddlebacks and hihi have been re-released to Kapiti.

Kapiti Island - male hihi

A number of re-introductions of hihi to Kapiti Island have been sanctioned because they have a chequered history of survival. An original 200 were introduced but there numbers fell rapidly. There were limited nectar and fruit producing plants on the island and the hihi face stiff competition from honey-eating rivals, tui and bellbirds, so feeders were set up to supplement their diet. These grew the population, though in early 2000 a decision was taken to discontinue feeding which led to a catastrophic fall in numbers to 7 breeding pairs. With the feeding programme reinstated, numbers have climbed back up to around 120.

Hihi feeder - Wikinson Track  Kapiti Island

They are very difficult to photograph and film because they are constantly on the move, while lighting in forest is marginal at best. It is the male who carries the colour and we only caught one rare glimpse of a female, though this is a good sign because they must have been nest sitting. You will see her towards the end of this collage of footage.

 

Though honeyeaters, hihi, like tui and bellbirds, also eat fruit and insects. (We’ve seen a bellbird doing the rounds of the plums in a plum tree. She moved from plum to plum, plunging her beak into the ripe fruit and sucking out the juice.) The feeding programme has led to an unexpected explosion in the bellbird population on the island because, while the feeders keep  tui at bay, the bellbirds have the run of the roost because hihi maintain a wary distance from both.    

Caught in the act - a bellbird in the hihi feeder 

One of the long time rangers on the island Pete Daniels, had a way with animals and knew these birds well. In his day (1980 and 90’s) a feeder was installed out on the red house verandah, The hihi could never get a look in because the kaka, tui and bellbird would keep them out. He set up an alternative food source on his kitchen table and they would come through the open window to feed; then fly off to bathe in the nearby creek. One good news story that came at the end of our trip was the first sighting of hihi up at the northern Iwi end of the island.   

These birds are in good hands with the current ranger Gena and partner Nick, who makes the laborious treks up the Trig and Wilkinson tracks each day to renew the nectar supply.

Bit of a shock to wake this morning and find David Bowie so sudddenly having left the planet....so we were back some time ago with  Rebel Rebel while posting this...  

Rebel Rebel, you've torn your dress

Rebel Rebel, your face is a mess

Rebel Rebel, how could they know?

Hot tramp, I love you so!

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On Kapiti Island 4 - New Zealand's premier conservation island - ground grazing

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 104

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Keruru -grassed, on Kapiti Island

One of the more intriguing aspects of a visit to the predator free island of Kapiti is the sight of native birds grazing on the ground in the open grassland areas. This includes not only the more familiar native birds you’ll spot on the Mainland, including keruru (native pigeon) and tui... 

Tui -on path below Red House 

but also the rarer korimako/bellbird... 

Spot the korimako

and the kakariki. This red crowned native parrot has now virtually disappeared from the North Island, as has the yellow crowned kakariki from the South.

Kakariki grazing on Kapiti Island 

Kakariki are very vulnerable to rats, because they nest close to the ground; though even in the 1970’s you could still see the odd pair in Wellington. They have now been reintroduced in the city, thanks to Zealandia, the predator controlled reserve in Karori; though it is unlikely they will spread far into the unprotected areas. Blame for the demise of these native parrots is usually placed upon introduced mammalian pests, like rats, stoats, possum and ferrets but gun-happy, forest razing humans must shoulder the prime responsibilty.

Paekakariki, just south of here is translated from the Maori as many kakariki, a fact Charlotte Godley described in her letters home to England in the early 1850’s. She was riding in a horse and cart, north along the coast and noted how these indigenous parrots gave New Zealand so much of its exotic flare. Then in the next sentence she detailed how her husband was sitting at the back of the cart with their four year old son, teaching him how to shoot them.    

Kakariki pair - female in foreground

There must be rich food pickings in these grassy areas for the birds all looked in very good condition;   keruru in particular being the plumpest in the country. They are also very visitor friendly.  We took a party of visitors over to the island a few years ago in dampish weather. One lifted off a nearby bush but found it difficult to get airborne. She sailed over the top of the tour leader (from behind) then got some extra lift by pushing off from the top of his (hatted) head.     

Roosting out of the rain...birds dislike inclement weather just as much as we do.

Track we were listening to while posting this. Well its a dreamy post-Christmas now, and one of the sunniest Xmas spells for many a year - so we're going with -The Lovin Spoonful -What a day for a daydream

I been havin' a sweet dream

I been dreamin' since I woke up today

It's starring me and my sweet dream

Cause she's the one makes me feel this way

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On Kapiti Island 3 -New Zealand's premier conservation reserve

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 103

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

Before we go up into the Kapiti forest to encounter more of our critically endangered birds, we are taking a short trip down to the stony beach shoreline, where a Blackback gull colony is right in the centre of its nesting cycle and unusual events were taking place.

The Blackback is not endangered and there are larger nearby colonies. One on pest free Matiu/Somes Island in the centre of Wellington Harbour (Te Whanganui o Tara) has proved a hazard to the local airport and steps have been taken to keep the size of the colony down (by slipping infertile eggs into the nests). Yet this Island colony is well established and its community dynamic proved intriguing.

Here upwards of a dozen nesting birds are spread along around a kilometre of coast, the females happily ensconced amongst the flotsam, well above the high tide mark. They make little effort to conceal their nests, though they will freeze if you venture too close, and only leave at the very last moment. 

All their defensive effort goes into mounting an aggressive aerial guard. Much of the colony flies over to the mainland beaches during the day to feed, (they flock back right on dusk), but there are always watchful birds left with the nesting females who will attack any human who ventures too close. A principal egg predator however, is the (protected) weka, and they hang around the colony; but a Blackback is more than a match for this endemic rail, and even at night the gulls can spot an intruder and will take to the air in defence.

Weka - near extinction in North Island  -foto Ridgway Lythgoe

Right in the centre of this colony however, was a nesting intruder – a lone variable oystercatcher -torea-pango. These birds are much more at risk than the Blackback’s and under siege from introduced pests where nesting on Mainland beaches. (From stoats, rats, dogs, feral cats et al; plus a self-introduced new comer, the spurwinged plover). But this presence provided a real intrigue because why would the blackback’s allow it?

Kapiti Island oystercatcher - gender unknown 

The oystercatcher pairs share the nesting, though there is only one at the nest at a time. We were on the island 5 days and saw the birds together just the once - at dusk - as they switched sitting responsibilities. They are somewhat like pied stilts in this. Assiduous at camouflage, they will spot you well before you spot them, and immediately leave the nest and begin very successful diversionary behaviours, fossicking innocently about, well away from the actual nest site, in order to lead you astray. So good were these two, that it took us forty eight hours before we finally developed the expertise to spot the sitting oystercatcher before she/he spotted us and thereby identify the nest – right out in the open.

I've got my eye on you

Oystercatcher nest

Blackback nest

Their nests are very similar to a blackback nest, and the eggs too are similar though lighter in colour; though you might easily mistake one for the other. But oystercatchers are both canny and feisty. They don’t confront a human, gauging them too large a threat so respond by diverting them. Smaller threats, as you will see in the video they implacably confront.

There is a lone male paradise duck –putangitangi- on the island. He has just lost his long time mate and is  a lost soul without her, perching on a picnic table through the night (which had to be cleaned every morning) before ambling down for company to the gull nesting colony during the day. The gulls were watchful but tolerant of his presence, but the oystercatcher wouldn’t have a bar of him – immediately denying him passageway and constantly swooping at him, and forcing him to fly passed to a roost at the far end of the colony.

So what exactly is going on here. Gulls are scavengers and could easily (a pukeko wouldn’t hesitate!) predate the eggs of the oystercatcher, but showed no interest in doing so. The oystercatcher, likewise could have had a feed out of the many gulls eggs it was surrounded by. And while it launched itself at the gloomy para, it showed no similar aggression to the gulls. 

They obviously know and are used to each. Presumably the gulls benefit from having this feisty cohabitant in residence, while the oystercatcher is in a much safer environment nested within this colony. Yet this is only half the story for these animals are actually building complex relationships. Most of the wildlife programmes you’ll see on TV and elsewhere focus on  predatory behaviours of wild animals. This is what attracts human interest (and lifts ratings) but it provides a very fallacious picture of the real lives of animals. Here on Kapiti, in an environment protected from human intervention and from introduced predators,  we are witnessing interspecies behaviours which both surprise and intrigue; for what is going on in these animals minds? Is it really that different to what goes on in ours? 

The benefit seems mutual and bares some similarity to the Raumati Beach dunelake environment when paradise duck were raising their young. (This wetland has now been destroyed by an expressway). The parents, particularly the females provide early warning signs of danger,  which benefitted (by alarming them) all the birds on the lake. They were also big enough  to confront the chief predator of the youngsters reared at the lake –pukeko. They  kept them at a wary distance.  

Track we were listening to while posting this - Mitchell Torok from 1953 - Caribbean...

Up in a tree so high away up in the sky

Sits a wide-eyed monkey on a limb.

He wonders why the people go to so much trouble

Just to try and be like him.

He doesn't understand that it's a ladys hand, 

That makes a heart feel so sublime.

But before too long he starts to sing their song, 

And then he gets in the conga line.

     
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Kapiti Island sojourn 2 -The Takahe

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 102

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

The Takahe is a flightless rail, one of our rarest birds and very endearing. They are a big lumbering animal (amongst our NZ native birds) and, having lived apart from mammals like most of our rarest birds, they appear tame and approachable. This led to their dramatic decline especially after the arrival of Europeans and they were thought to be extinct, until rediscovered in South Island alpine  tussocklands in 1948.  Even after their rediscovery however they were poorly managed until the 1980’s when they began to be placed in pest controlled areas like Kapiti Island. There are now around 260 birds. This is an increase of around 60 in 15 years so this is a long term rehabilitation programme with a viable population thought to be around 500 birds.

Ideal takahe country is open grasslands. And this is the reason they are doing well on Mana Island just south of here, where a couple of years ago we encounted 11 youngsters. (Four were recently shot in a pukeko culling fiasco involving duckshooting volunteers on Motutapu Island in the Hauraki Gulf). But Kapiti is a reforested island and not ideal takahe country, so a minimum number are kept here. These are  three older birds, that live on the flats around this DoC station. 


It is still hoped they will breed so they are fed a couple of times a week to keep them in breeding condition through the spring.  We only spotted one over the first few days; hanging around the Red House and cawing for a feed, and this raised our nesting hopes, but then all three came out one evening, so it’s a little up in the air as to whether they’ll produce youngsters this year. It’s still early in the season however so let's keep our fingers crossed.  

We have put together a video clip of these birds coming out into the open. It gives a good idea of how these birds move and then their distinctive harsh cawing. Both kiwi and weka can match this grating sound though you’ll only hear kiwi at night and though you'll see weka through the day they are vocal mostly around dusk and dawn. We were especially fortunate however in capturing one takahe on the run and here you can see a rollicking movement that traces them right back to their dinosaur ancestors.

 

Track we were listening to while posting this we are still knee deep in birdland with Charlie Parker at Carnegie Hall...

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Kapiti Island Sojourn 1

Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 101

Actively supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds

  

 Shoulder High!  Youthful kaka on Kapiti Island -foto Ridgway Lythgoe

We are just back from our stay on Kapiti Island and will be reporting on that sojourn over the next few posts. This is New Zealand’s premier conservation reserve and it has a rich though not always laudable history. 

It was named Entry Island by James Cook in 1770 and one of the most famous of the Maori Rangatira -Te Rauparaha- is buried here in an unmarked grave (to forestall his enemies digging him up). Called the Napoleon of the South, he was also one of the most violent, so it is a fitting redemption perhaps, that much of the Island was declared a conservation reserve by the first effective Liberal administration elected in the country, in the 1890’s.

Kapiti Island from Raumati Beach

The Island is now co-managed with local Iwi (Maori) who operate a Visitor Centre at the top end of the island. It was a whaling station for many years however, and the Right Whale in particular, having been exterminated from these waters, is yet to return.

It lies 5 km’s off shore. That’s  about a 20 minute boat trip on a good day, but it remains very isolated (to keep it rat, mouse,  stoat, possum etc free); and the crossing can be tricky. There are fierce rip tides twice daily, while the weather can change it from docile to ballsy within half an hour, especially at this blustery time of the year.  Trips are dependent on the early morning weather forecast so visitors can have a frustrating time getting across, especially with boat skippers erring on the side of safety.

Marginal condiitons out in the strait 

Even in these days of helicopters, wifi and radio telephone,  it can still feel a very isolated locale, though not so much as it was for the first custodians Stan and Amy Wilkinson and family. When Amy broke her leg in the 1920's, Stan had to light a bonfire on the beach to summon help from the Mainland.

Inside Kapiti Island forest

The island was originally covered in podocarp forest, dominated by red flowering rata, but like much of the rest of the country, this was burnt and cleared by successive waves of European immigrants, to establish farms. It was never economic however, and  this led to its establishment as our earliest conservation venture, though it remained infested with possum and rat in particular.  

Remains of giant rata burnt out in nineteenth century fires.

The forest  was left to regenerate yet even after 120 years there are few of our large forest trees here. These are rata trees which were in the Island's gullies and escaped the fiery holocaust. They bloom red from about now. Much of what is now on the island is understory regrowth, but this still gives the island the haunting beauty, typical of our temperate podocarp. The forest birds, wiped out with the forest were gradually reintroduced.

Mist shrouded forest at the top of the Island

We hadn’t been back to the island for around a decade and it was gratifying to see how this regrowth has continued to flourish. This is particularly true up at the Iwi end of the island where regenerating bush has now taken back the former farming areas.            

The typically patchworked greens of New Zealand regenerating forest

In one of the most successful of our early pest eradication programmes Kapiti Island was declared pest free in the late 1980’s. It has been intensively managed since then and this has led to an explosion in  numbers of the many endangered forest species that find a refuge here. These include hihi, tieke, kiwi, kokako, kakariki, korimiko tui, kaka, robin (all birds) along with gekko and skink and our big lumbering dinosaur of a bird– the takahe amongst others and in our next posts, we’ll detail our encounters with some of these… Kapiti Island is as close as you can get to the experience of what Aotearoa/NZ was like before the arrival of the human  and it is this that provides the magic of even the shortest  visit there.

Track we were listening to

We’ve been on a Charlie Parker bender. Five CD’s from his Carnegie Hall appearances. Its tooooo much….Yet how appropriate; to be in bird-land listening to Bird…

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