Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 11:02 am Post subject: Nesting in mid winter
As much as you read they breed in winter, on here and elsewhere its still an amazing thing to witness for the first time.
Recent weather here has been around -11C at night, with -17.6 recorded quite locally, and certainly averaging well below zero the last few weeks.
So today my wife checked the nest boxes and found two pairs are laying, ok i know its supposed to happen but its still amazing, were 4-5 months away from the local birds nesting.
We dont have snow, but -5 to -8 deg frosts and they go to nest AND produce the same amount of healthy chicks. _________________ My Spelling is Not Incorrect...It's 'Creative'
The Dart River is the type of habitat where Kakariki may still be found This is in the South Island of New Zealand. Terrain here is dramatic, and at any time of year there can be snow, sleet and freezing conditions. Kakariki need to be resiliant to suvive. This mountainous area of NZ has big mountains, dense forest and wild rivers
Unfortunately it is not the weather that beats them, but the introduced rats and stoats that will take the female sitting on eggs.
but the introduced rats and stoats that will take the female sitting on eggs
I have been doing some thinking about this.
30 40 yrs ago weka where very common, in fact a pain in the but at night around the camp fire (not allowed camp fires in the bush any more), cause put anything shiney down...it was gone.
Then about the time hurricane Bola (25 /30 yrs agao) came along weka seemed to just disappear...wood pidegen, Tui few other species....all good eating species.
After that a whole heap of other species started to decline, many seriously. including skinks.
Rats, mice are no match for weka, and I believe a stoat thinks twice about taking them on.
We have kakariki breeders basically ready to supply to conservation (DoC) huge numbers of kakariki to bring flocks back into numbers where their social stucture is big enough for good defence/warning systems to work
We also have private breeders who can breed weka in huge numbers.
We have Government and DoC who are straped for cash, and so tied down in red tape and BS, asking for huge budgets to research to see if private captive breeding would work 1st.
Surely private captive breeding, and release, THEN study would be the order...if doesnt work (unlikely) there is nothing to loose.
Sort of catch 22 really, with a bit of 'cart before the horse' thrown in for good luck.
Beurocratic BS, DoC 'managers' looking after their own little empires, not listening to the grass roots DoC people...in fact stiffling their inovation and knowledge /experiance at the grass root level.....
Has and Is doing far more damage to Conservation, species numbers than any rats and mice.
Get one or 2 Grass roots guys bitching 'off the record' OR 1 or 2 Ex DoC people bitching...one can throw much of that out with the baby water.
But these people are popping up all over the place...and one runs into them in the most unlikey places, like now working in outdoor hunting supply shops, retired from the work force, business enterpanuers , ex permit inspectors, now working for private conservation projects... And then there are the local government conservation people, doing great work, wanting to build take the process further and DoC has the last say.
Yes rats Stoats ,wild cats are a problem, but not as big a problem as DoCs beuroatic , empire building, protectionist BS.
These rats , cats etc have become even bigger issue because the lack of weka, and not making use of private breeders to re establish flocks back to populations where the social structure in that flock has effective warning defence systems. _________________ My Spelling is Not Incorrect...It's 'Creative'
Both of our nests failed to produce any chicks, as one pair bred twice last year with no probs ihave to assume the couple of weeks of -10c we had was too much for them. Anyway one pair has a second batch of eggs and now temps are much milder, 2-10C, so fingers crossed...
I have not been successful neither this fall/winter. One pair had 2 chicks but they died at 1 week of age, another pair is raising 2 chicks, other 3 pairs didn't produce any offspring or eggs, but they were force-paired so maybe there was part of the problem.
I'm arranging the cockatiels now and I'll place 2-3 pairs of kakariki in the spare cages to breed during spring/early summer, then I'll try again another batch of fall/winter breeding.
I guess your pennants are about to start breeding.
By the way... how is the cockatiel scene in the UK?
Well that shows me for not checking properly, went out this morning to feed the kaks and a young female fledgling was just out of the box, not sure if there are any more i cant check that next box without distubing mum who is sitting on a next box above.
Pabloc i dont have any pennants, must be confusing me with someone else. Not sure about the cockatiel seen, certianly plenty of chicks around last year going for very low prices so i guess there are plenty of breeders. I fancied tryinga few myself but just too busy to take on more birds at the moment.
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