Birds for Company

I could never get my head around the fascination some English men have for their homing pigeons. Perhaps it is because I’m not restricted for space whereas generally they are, or perhaps keeping caged birds doesn’t tick the boxes for me.

I do share the interest in things avian though, actually, it is more than a passing interest because I have three bird ID books – New Zealand, East Africa and Britain & Europe.

There is a rough area down by the river where I have been working to establish a native shrubbery that will provide a habitat for birds, although that’s not my main motivation – it is just something I like to do because trees are more appealing than gorse and other weeds.

It is hard work for an old fella: the gorse and broom are old, the basal diameter is nearly five inches and the blackberry has stems as thick as my finger, with barbed tendrils five or six yards long!

Ah but the hard work is mitigated by the company of a group of fantails that chase the moths and other insects that fly off whenever I shake the vegetation.

Fantails are one of New Zealand’s most endearing birds because they seem unafraid of people. They are small, light and I could cup one in by hands - but the tail would stick out a bit. The reason they like to be close when people move is that disturbed insects to fly into the air for fantail to opportunistically catch a meal. The fantail’s tail allows them to be nimble flyers, darting about after their prey and you can hear their beak snap shut when they attack.

They are bossy little buggers, if I stop work for a rest, they chatter, ‘cheet, cheet’, trying to encourage me to move around so that the can feed again.

They take unknown risks, having no fear of the roar of the chainsaw, fluttering very close to the cutter bar– near misses are common.

There were six fantails feeding around me, which may infer that their numbers are high, but if there is snow, and because they are insectivorous, they run out of food and perish. Too few insects are active in the cold.

From time to time flocks of the little vacuum cleaners, the waxeyes, [silvereyes or white-eyes, to some] pay a visit. Endemic to East Africa, parts of Australia and the Pacific, they are little omnivorous birds that call to each other and scrap as they skim through the area feeding on aphids, scale insects or mealy bugs. 

I cut the large stems of gorse and broom into firewood - the two species are very good burning.

Stacking it to dry is quite enjoyable because a pair of wood pigeons that are either unafraid of me or enjoy my choice of radio programming.

The New Zealand Wood Pigeon is the largest pigeon on the world! With a distinctive white chest, beady red eyes and red legs - they sit so close I could touch them.

During autumn they feed on fruits and vegetation so are attracted to the tree lucerne (tagasaste) trees that I have planted for them. They are clumsy walkers, especially when they are fat and full, breaking branches yet managing to eat upside down and hopping noisily from branch to branch.

On the other hand they are very good in the air, sometimes swooping upwards to the point of stall, then diving enjoying the use of gravity.

Sometimes when I coo at them, they will coo back and when they feed on cherry plumbs, they use me as a target for the stones!

As I stacked the firewood one of the pair had what looked like seeds of a Clematis stuck to her head, it has been stuck there for a couple of days, which is unusual and I now suspect that it may be feathers disturbed during mating, which again does not tally because it is the wrong time of the year. But anyway something was stuck to her head.

We have large hole-cum-bluff [excavated for road fill] where I tip green waste; branches, weeds and lawn clippings, which is a habitat for slaters [English – woodlice], hoppers and blowfly larvae – a veritable food-bank for blackbirds and thrushes. They work the area systematically and toss the top material downhill in their search for food, thus providing more space in which to dump waste material.

I enjoy the song of both birds but blackbirds annoy because especially the males, have and alarm call that rabbits have learned to recognise, so if I’m hunting a rabbit and cross the path of a blackbird, I might as well give up because the bunnies have been alerted!

I’m lucky, it’s all cheap entertainment!