Source: Radio New Zealand
If you want to catch a tiny bird and move it to a new home, you need expert help and your car’s aircon on.
Overheating is a threat to the rifleman.
And buzzing cicadas can get in the way of finding them in the first place as a group rounding up riflemen at the Wainuiomata water catchment area found out.
Behind four locked gates and among a gazillion buzzing cicadas, 30 volunteers intent on capturing up to 40 of the country’s tiniest birds unpacked on a bush road at the weekend.
They tested their radios, gathered together tent poles to spread out their so-called ‘mist’ nets – because they have such a fine mesh – and tested the half-a-dozen calls on the phone app they would play through speakers to lure the birds in.
The rifleman or tītitipounamu is New Zealand’s smallest bird. Steph Raille
Jim O’Malley laid out the high stakes to the three capture teams.
O’Malley helped set up the years-long Kotukutuku Ecological Restoration Project to move 40 or so birds north to a restored forest near Paraparaumu.
“The thing with riflemen is that they’re time critical,” he told them.
“After four hours, their mortality rate from stress goes up a lot. So we’re working in a window of three and a half hours from capture to release at Kāpiti.”
Volunteers at the banding station table. RNZ / Phil Pennington
Only trained people would get to handle the birds.
Greg Sherley would lead the banding team – he did his doctorate in the rifleman or tītitipounamu.
“Ornithologists will say there’s a ‘giz’ about a bird, a G-I-Z, which is talking about the essential nature of a bird,” Sherley said.
“And rifleman males are green mainly on the top, and in the light, they glow … they glow a green. If you get them in the right sunlight … [it’s] very very much like green pounamu.”
Morag Fordham with a rifleman. RNZ / Phil Pennington
Morag Fordham had this take on the birds.
“They look like wee squeaky brussel sprouts,” Fordham laughed.
They are the country’s smallest but do not rate in the world’s top 10 tiniest, dominated by humming-birds (the smallest bee hummingbird is a third of the weight of a rifleman).
It had taken years and a 150-plus-page report to get the permits for the project – that was “the most frustrating part,” said Sherley – but now they were here.
Fordham would lead one of the three capture teams.
Another team walked in with Simon Fordham – the Fordham pair from Auckland between them have caught over a thousand of the birds (though Morag is more a kōkako specialist).
However, it was evident from the word go there was going to be a problem. The crunch of our footfalls on the gravel road was muffled by another sound.
“We’re trying to find any birds, and so we do have a problem today with cicada noise,” Fordham said.
“That not only makes it harder for us to hear where birds are, but also birds need to be closer to hear the calls that we play.”
The keen ears of Victoria University ecology students proved crucial – Ryan and Harry, who studies the North Island robin, were both on their first bird hunt but seemed especially good at hearing the super-highpitched squeak of riflemen.
A rifleman is carefully extracted from the net. RNZ / Phil Pennington
A squeak heard, the team I am in set up the net, 4m high and 7m long, along the gravel road and hung the speakers in branches either side.
After an hour waiting we have had no luck and were about to move on.
“I haven’t heard any,” said Simon Fordham. “Emma has.”
Then suddenly, we spot a bird in a tree. It flies into the net, and Fordham and a trained volunteer hurry in, then quietly and calmly get it out.
We radio in the day’s first catch to the banding station.
“Woo-hoo, that’s awesome, great work … we’ll see your rifleman soon,” they radio back.
At this point the three-and-a-half hour countdown to get the bird to Kāpiti began, from the net, to a small soft drawstring bag, to a volunteer to walk it back to the banding station on a fold-out picnic table.
Then into a wee box with a takeaway meal.
“Sometimes you’re lucky if you’re standing by the boxes, you’ll hear this ‘tu, tu, tu, tu, tu’ – it’s the wee riflemen are picking up the mealworms,” said Morag Fordham.
Cicada noise on the first day made it difficult to hear any rifleman. Steph Raille
Paddy and Gill get the job of driving the first bird to Kāpiti, the aircon on full.
“No smoking, no talking, no stereo in the car, no phones, no slamming doors … no coffee stops,” they go through the rules.
“It was a silent, freezing trip for an hour,” Paddy said.
“It felt much longer,” Gill said.
It turns out to be the only bird caught on Saturday.
On Sunday morning, coordinator Jen Andrews updated the teams.
“I thought I would mention the bird that was caught yesterday, we heard from Peter the release went really well – he arrived safe and happy, shot out-of-the-box.
“So today we’re really hoping to catch some friends, so he’s not quite the loneliest rifleman in Kāpiti.”
As it turned out, the wee male won’t be.
Sunday was earlier, greyer and the cicadas were a little quieter. It paid off.
Nine birds were caught. I got to walk one out for banding.
Morag’s team ended up catching six of Sunday’s nine.
“Phew,” she said looking down at a juvenile female in her hands. “Hello sweetheart.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
