Birds of New Zealand: part 4

I am not a twitcher – they have lists of birds and do anything, go anywhere at the drop of a hat to add to the ever-increasing list of birds they’ve spotted, to the point of being obsessive and often to the detriment of the birds they’re trying to see – but I am becoming much more serious about and dedicated to bird watching.

Naturally enough that also means my collection of bird photos continues to grow apace, which also means it’s about time I posted another blog about some of our wonderful New Zealand birds (my three previous blogs on the subject can be seen here and here and here).

This post covers a rather eclectic selection of birds, in this case based on the Western Springs location where I photographed them (though some photos were taken in other places on other days).

Tui (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae)

Called the parson bird by the early European immigrants to New Zealand, presumably because of the resemblance of the white tufts of feathers at the front of its neck to a priest’s clerical collar, the tui is anything but pious. In fact, it has a habit of imbibing so much nectar from blossoming trees that it becomes quite intoxicated and sings uproariously. Its song is one of its most endearing qualities, highly variable, pleasingly melodic but also including a comprehensive vocabulary of clicks, creaks, cackles and groans.

Beautifully plumaged in shades ranging from iridescent greens and blues through dark browns to an inky black, the tui has quite a distinctive flight pattern, with louder flapping than most other birds due to its relatively short wide wings. Chances are, then, that you’ll hear the tui before you see it.

Left: tui. Right: New Zealand pigeon.

New Zealand pigeon (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae)

Our native pigeon, also known by its Maori name kererū, may be a plump critter but, in the breeding season, its aerial displays can be spectacular, flying high, swooping fearlessly earthwards, then stalling and pulling swiftly up before a potentially fatal impact with treetops or the ground. I presume female pigeons are suitably impressed!

With feathers of metallic green and a crisp clean white, with red eyes and red feet, New Zealand pigeons are essential to our forest environment. By feasting on the fruit of forest trees and shrubs, then flying around pooping a lot, they ensure the seeds of those trees and shrubs are widely dispersed. Sadly, though illegal, humans have been known to feast on the pigeon, meaning its numbers are not as high as they once were.

Male brown teal

Brown teal (Anas chlorotis)

The brown teal is listed ‘at risk’ so I consider myself very lucky to have seen this little beauty. Once widespread throughout New Zealand, the brown teal is now mostly confined to the northern parts of the North Island because of the predations of introduced species like rats and stoats and the loss of their habitat. You can read more about efforts to conserve these pretty little creatures on brownteal.com.  

When you get the opportunity, it’s an easy bird to identify – it’s slightly smaller than a mallard and predominantly dark brown. At breeding time, the male has a distinctive iridescent green sheen on the back of his head, as you can see in the photo at right.

Paradise shelduck (Tadorna variegata)

According to my bird guide, the paradise shelduck is ‘highly sexually dimorphic’ – for the uninitiated, that’s not some kind of kinky fetish; it just means the male and female look very different, as you can see from the photos below. It’s a large duck, somewhere between the size of a mallard and a goose.

The paradise shelduck’s Maori name, pūtangitangi, gives a clue to the sound of its distinctive and incessant calls: ‘pū’ means the ‘origin of’ and tangi is ‘to weep’ or ‘to utter a plaintive cry’. The chicks aren’t quite so maudlin though and cheep like any other duckling. And, as you can see from the photos here, they are extremely cute little bundles of fluff.

Paradise shelduck chick at various stages of development

Paradise shelduck: female at left and male at right

Black swan (Cygnus atratus)

Many people think of the black swan as an Australian bird – it is, after all, both are the state symbol and the state emblem of Western Australia. However, scientists have discovered that the black swan was present here in New Zealand at the time of first human settlement, but had been hunted to extinction by the time Europeans first arried. In the 1860s, they were deliberately reintroduced from Australia and, judging by how quickly the local population grew, they may, at the same time, also have re-colonised New Zealand naturally – flown or been blown across the ditch from Australia.

Appropriately enough, the black swan’s Latin name atratus means ‘to be clothed in black for mourning’. Perhaps that’s why some people believe it to be a harbinger of bad luck. Personally, I think the swan dressed all in black is a very stylish and elegant-looking bird.

Much of the information about these birds came from my much-thumbed copy of Paul Scofield and Brent Stephenson, Birds of New Zealand: A Photographic Guide, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2013.

Black swan, adult at left, cygnets feeding at right

The humble sparrow

Probably the most well-known bird in New Zealand and, indeed, in the entire world is the humble house sparrow, Passer domesticus domesticus. According to my trusty copy of Birds of New Zealand, the sparrow ‘benefits from man-made agriculture and building design without affecting humans in any substantial way’ – the perfect combination – and, although it ’has undergone huge declines in Europe’, it’s still doing well here in New Zealand.

A male house sparrow, New Zealand

The sparrow is not a native New Zealander – it was introduced here several times between 1866 and 1871, and has clearly made itself at home. There are 26 species of house sparrow in the world, and they are native to Europe, Asia and north-west Africa, though there are also American sparrows (a separate family, the Emberizidae) and birds with similar names, like the Java sparrow (also a different family, the Estrildidae). Sparrows were certainly familiar birds during the time I lived in Peru and in Cambodia and, being such familiar birds in so many countries, they have become the subject of many sayings and proverbs. I will share some I’ve found, along with some of my photos of one of my favourite little birds.

Sparrows bathing, New Zealand

‘I am only a sparrow amongst a great flock of sparrows.’ Evita Peron

Rufous-collared sparrow, Peru

‘The sparrow that is twittering on the edge of my balcony is calling up to me this moment a world of memories that reach over half my lifetime, and a world of hope that stretches farther than any flight of sparrows.’ Donald G. Mitchell

Male sparrow, Cambodia

‘I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.’ Henry David Thoreau

Cute sparrow fledglings, New Zealand

The humble sparrow has even made its way into the work of that famous bard William Shakespeare. For example, he uses the sparrow to illustrate Hamlet’s belief that there is rhyme and reason to even the slightest events of the universe: ‘There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow’ (Hamlet, act five, scene two). And, in King Lear (act one, scene four), Shakespeare has the Fool utter this piece of wisdom: ‘For, you know, nuncle, the hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long that it had it head bit off by it young’.

Rufous-collared sparrow, Peru

‘When the sparrow sings its final refrain, the hush is felt nowhere more deeply than in the heart of man.' Don Williams Jnr.

Female house sparrow, New Zealand

And then there are the proverbs …

‘A sparrow in hand is worth a pheasant that flieth by’, and ‘A sparrow in hand is worth more than a vulture flying’, and ‘A sparrow in the hand is better than a pigeon on the wing’, all French proverbs. And the variations on these from other European countries: the German and Polish versions are the same: ‘A sparrow in the hand is better than a pigeon on the roof’; the Spanish: ‘A sparrow in the hand is better than a bustard on the wing’; the Russian: ‘A sparrow in the hand is better than a cock on the roof’, and the Portuguese: ‘Better a sparrow in the hand than two flying’.

Sparrow, Cambodian

Then there are several countries’ versions of proverbs with two sparrows. Firstly, the French: ‘Two sparrows on the same ear of corn are not long friends’; the Spanish: ‘Two sparrows on one ear of corn never agree’; and very similar to the Spanish is the Romanian: ‘Two sparrows on one ear of corn make an ill agreement’.

Another Peruvian rufous-collared sparrow

And I’ll leave you with a few of the 50-odd other proverbs I discovered that all feature our little feathered friend …

Russian: ‘A spoken word is not a sparrow. Once it flies out, you can't catch it.’

Danish: ‘A sparrow suffers as much when it breaks its leg as does a Flanders horse.’

Bantu: ‘Only heaven can see the back of a sparrow.’

Malawian: ‘An upstart is a sparrow eager to marry a hornbill.’

Turkish: ‘Who fears the sparrows must not sow millet.’

Japanese: ‘The sparrow flying behind the hawk thinks the hawk is fleeing.’

Burmese: ‘Sparrows who mimic peacocks are likely to break a thigh.’

Scottish: ‘Auld sparrows are ill to tame.’

A curious young female sparrow, New Zealand

Birds of New Zealand: part one

Even though I live on the 9th floor of an apartment block in central Auckland city, I still wake up to the sounds of birds singing … and I like that … a lot! Sparrows and starlings, blackbirds and thrushes, and tui in the right season, are all cheeping, chirping and warbling well before I stir at around 6am. In fact, due to the intensity and permanency of artificial light in the inner city, some of them start their morning chorus as early as 4am!

Gulls entertain me riding the thermals between apartment buildings, and those cheeky little Australian interlopers, the rosellas, provide a bright burst of colour as they sweep through the trees in the park across the road. In the late afternoon, starlings rush in their hundreds to their favourite roosting trees just down the road, so many of them that it’s best to avoid walking beneath those trees if you want to stay poop-free! And, as Auckland abounds with magnificent parks, I regularly see ducks and geese, herons and pukeko during my frequent walks.

I’ve shared photos of the birds I found in Siem Reap and in Kuala Lumpur. Here now are just a few of my frequently sighted feathered friends from Auckland. (Notice I have titled this blog part one; with so many birds to share, rather than make this blog too long, I will soon add a part two.)

I was rather surprised to discover that the White-eye or Silvereye is actually not a New Zealand native, having been first recorded here in 1832 ... though that does make me wonder if it arrived much earlier and there was simply no European here to record it! In the intervening years, it has certainly made itself at home and now lives comfortably throughout the country, from sea shore to forest edge, feeding on copious quantities of fruit. Its scientific name, zosterops, from the Ancient Greek words Zoster, meaning belt or girdle, and ophthalmos, meaning eye, obviously refers to the white marking that surrounds its eyes, making it easy to identify.

The Mallard is another bird that has made itself right at home in New Zealand since being introduced some time between 1865 and the 1920s. In fact, it’s so comfy here that it’s hybridised with our native grey duck! This photo, of course, shows the female – the male has a brilliant green head and white collar ring – but I think she’s a beauty even if her colour is a basic brown. I have no wish to offend vegetarians but these little ducks taste delicious. My Dad was a duck-shooter, with a maimai on a small lake near my hometown. I recall many winter mornings sitting plucking ducks in our carport, I got my first anatomy lessons from Dad during the gutting process, and I can still taste the rich flavour of my Mum’s perfectly roasted wild duck.

Though most of us have grown up feeding bread to the ducks at our local lakes or rivers, it’s actually not the smartest thing to do. The ducks usually have plenty of natural food to go around and those bits of bread the ducks don’t eat help to nurture Avian botulism, which can paralyse and kill both the ducks and other birds. So, next time you’re planning to take that stale bread to your local pond, think again!

I remember being surprised during a visit to the Amazon jungle in Peru to see a bird I recognised from home – their Purple Gallinule (Porphyrio martinicus) looks remarkably like our Pukeko (Porphyrio melanotus melanotus). They make the same noisy squawk and have that same cheeky strut, flashing their white undertail. I was also surprised to find Pukeko living right here in the central city, in a small area of untidy shrubs and long grass, right next to a busy motorway. But they obviously thrive there, as I was delighted to watch the antics of a breeding pair with their two half-grown chicks as I passed by just last weekend.

In fact, last Sunday’s walk was a good one for bird sightings, perhaps because of the rain from Saturday night’s storm. On a grassy slope behind Auckland Museum in the Domain, I chanced upon another beautiful creature, the White-faced heron (below, left). Once again, I was surprised to learn that this bird was self-introduced in the 19th century and that sightings were rare until the 1960s. The blue-grey body and white face plumage is such an elegant combination, I feel, and the bird in my photo is apparently wearing its alternate breeding plumage, as witnessed by the longer, blue-grey filoplumes on its breast and back.

The ponds at the Domain are a great place to watch the antics of another introduced bird, the Greylag Goose (above, right). James Cook brought these first to our islands in 1773, and they are now feral in both the North and South Islands. Don’t be fooled, as I was, into thinking the white and brown are different species; they are not. The all-white plumage is a result of domestication but the geese revert after a couple of generations to their original brown ancestral plumage once humans stop interfering with their breeding. Fascinatingly, the word goose is one of the oldest words in the Indo-European languages – perhaps an indication that the birds have been domesticated for a very long time indeed.

If you’re wondering where I got all these fascinating snippets of avian information, well, one of the huge benefits of working for Auckland University Press, even temporarily, is receiving a free copy of their publications. And, hot off the press this month comes Birds of New Zealand, the definitive guide to all our feathered friends and a must-have for every Kiwi household. As well as all the pertinent facts and figures, it has amazing images, making species identification a breeze. And it’s not too big to bundle into your backpack when you’re off for a hike. The perfect Christmas pressie for friends and family!