Environment – Birds from my bed

Some of the best birding is done from the comfort of your own bed. 

I woke one morning recently to the call of a kaka flying over Arkles Bay. Once this would have had me leaping up to get a look at it but now it’s a common enough event that I’m not in such a rush. Kaka have regained a foothold on the mainland at Tawharanui and it can only be a matter of time before they establish here on the Coast.

As I say, some of the best birding is done first thing in the morning as you wake to the dawn chorus. From bed I can hear the kingfisher, or kotare, calling its repeated ‘kek kek kek’, a grey warbler (riroriro) warming up with a half song, starlings, doves, thrushes, blackbirds and tui all up and about foraging for the metaphorical early worm.

Many of the birds I’m hearing from my bed each morning are not native. While Pest Free Hibiscus Coast is aimed largely at seeing more of our native taonga return to the Coast, many non-natives are also benefiting from pest control and, to the extent that these are not detrimental to the native species we’re working to help, they can only add to the pleasure of spending time in our parks and gardens.

Remember that most of New Zealand’s native land birds are forest birds. In the new urban forest (our gardens) many of these birds can do well if we get rid of the rats, possums and stoats that prey on them. However, in the open spaces created by farmland and parks we don’t have the native birds to fill the gap (although pukeko and paradise shelduck putangitangi have done exceptionally well in this niche).

The day passes, dusk settles in and the morepork (ruru) is the obvious bird that you could hear from your bed. Listen out for their great variety of high screeks (sometimes mistaken for kiwi calls) and mutterings, not just the classic soft “morepork” call. Pukeko will call randomly during the night and can also be mistaken for kiwis.

Being a night bird, the morepork has large eyes for hunting, unlike the introduced mammal predators (rats and stoats for example) which hunt with their noses. A native bird thinks ‘if I just sit still and blend I’ll be safe’, while a rat thinks ‘good, it’s sitting still, I can follow the bird’s scent to find an easy meal waiting’.

The best thing we can do to help is to join the many people already trapping on the Coast this spring and make the place safer for not just birds but all our wildlife. Forest and Bird’s Pest Free Hibiscus Coast team can help you do this.