Environment – New birds on the block

 As kids we all thought the world was static but with age we see that the only constant is change.

We see this so dramatically through human induced change or natural upheavals but there is a steady stream of small changes that we soon accept as ‘the new normal’.

When spotted and barbary doves first arrived in my garden around a decade ago, their incessant cooing drove me mad. Now I barely notice them. Even the noisy spur wing plover, which arrived on the Hibiscus Coast quite recently, is now pretty much accepted. We quickly adapt and our children will grow up never having known life without them.

Several decades before this, the welcome swallow was the new arrival, reaching Auckland in the 1960s. And 100 years before that the silvereye, (or tauhou – which can translate from Maori as exotic or unfamiliar), was the new bird on the block, settling in Auckland in 1865. Amazing to think of this small garden bird crossing the breadth of the Tasman Sea. In fact there is a record in 1865 of a flock of silvereyes landing on a ship 480km north of New Zealand. I wonder how they fared.

Yet another recent arrival is one we think of as very much our own, the pukeko. Yet these have only become established in New Zealand in the last thousand years or so having flown across the Tasman Sea from Australia.

Only with the changing landscape brought about by Maori and then European settlement did pukeko really establish in large numbers. We can see at Shakespear Park how well these birds thrive in the right mix of bush and pasture.

My most exciting “new” bird in recent months is the kakariki, or red crowned parakeet, which I’ve seen flying over Arkles Bay and Manly.

While not common, they are regularly seen at Shakespear Regional Park (often from the Waterfall Gully carpark) but not so often along the peninsula.

Maybe the growing community pest control efforts led by Hibiscus Coast Forest and Bird will see kakariki become as common on the coast as swallows and silvereyes. Here’s hoping.