Orokonui Ecosanctuary/Nga Manu - Birds

=Nga Manu-Birds= (class Aves or clade Avialae)

Bird definition

 * Feathers, beak - no teeth, lay hard-shelled eggs, high metabolic rate (the amount of energy used up when resting), four-chambered heart (like humans) and a lightweight strong skeleton. All modern birds have wings; moa, had no wings!

Bird Characteristics

 * Smart - parrots - kaka, kea, kakapo and kakariki as well as corvids (NZ raven extinct - oops) are among the most intelligent animal species.
 * Several bird species make and use tools, and many are social and share knowledge across generations - NZ examples...
 * Many species migrate, some perform shorter acrobatic type movements in the same area
 * Birds are social, communicating with visual signals, calls, and songs, and participating in such social behaviours as cooperative hunting, flocking, and mobbing of predators.
 * The majority of bird species are monogamous (married), usually for one breeding season, sometimes for many years, but rarely for life.
 * Eggs are usually laid in a nest and incubated by the parents. Most chicks have a period of parental care after hatching - then they are coaxed or pushed from the nest...flap, flap, flap
 * Birds can be found in folklore, religion, and across cultures

Aotearoa Perspective

 * Evolution
 * Gondwana breaks away
 * Kiwi rattite - elephant bird
 * Moa - south american rail?
 * Plants
 * Divarication
 * Leaf changing of horoeka plant above the height of tallest Moa - horoeka in Chatham Islands does't display same change, Chathams never had moa.

Kākā

 * Smart birds who chatter to each other in loud harsh calls, laughing and whistling. In the old days when there were flocks of kākā they were led by a female. She flew around the group keeping watch, rounding them up when they strayed and moving them on to the next food source

Kereru

 * Kererū - aka:kukupa,kuku - resemblance to sound made when cooing, kuu, kuu
 * Its roll as seed disperser especially important since moa extinction - tawa and other big berries can only be eaten by kereru - weep, weep of the tawa mamas who need their drupe babies to be spread far and wide
 * Large mouth - pineapple eater if human size
 * Frugivorous, primarily eating fruits and drupes. Also browses on leaves and buds, especially nitrogen rich foliage during breeding season e.g Kōwhai, broom
 * In what way does eating nitrogen rich food assist the kereru?
 * Plumage owes colour to Maui the trickster who tried to follow his mother by first hiding her beautiful coloured skirt, then as she plunged into dark hole Maui followed her in the form of a kereru wearing the skirt
 * Munch discard, munch discard - gulp, slide across tongue, squeeze down oesophagus and plop into the crop - the temporary food storage pouch. Then into the proventriculus another storage area that uses enzymes to break down the food. Squeezed into the gizzard, a specialized stomach constructed of thick muscular walls, which grinds up food using small pebbles. Then intestines, sausage like and to the cloaca; which is the posterior opening for seed covering of blankets - a mix of poos and wees!
 * Fast, undulating flights - wing strokes pause, swooping, half looping, noisy.
 * Foliage crash landing, bumble, tumble grab and peer about.
 * Nest - dishevelled twigs, high, just below canopy - seen as unlucky to ever see a kereru nest
 * Pigeon milk - rhythmical pumping of regurgitation gloopity gloop, from both parents into a chick that has waited patiently for this delivery

Project Kereru Dunedin

Kiwi

 * Orokonui has 22 kiwi with reports of small kiwi prints in different parts of the sanctuary
 * Brown Kiwi are stumpy, with no tails, straggly-hair-like feathers, a long pliable bill, with whiskers at the base and nostrils at end - no wonder a lot of kiwi teens go emu!
 * Feeds on bugs, worms, larvae, eels, amphibians as well as berries and fruit
 * Vanilla mint ice-cream, a double smidgeon of chocolate sauce - poo!
 * Musky smell of Kiwi make it easy for mammal predators to track them to their burrow
 * Fire pond fenced after kiwi drowns - long pointed toes and wing stumps are no aids for swimming
 * Can smell up to 30cm below surface of ground???
 * Father incubates
 * No egg tooth on un-hatched chick beak - legs push and claw

Takahē

 * 263 Known takahē - 2013
 * Deemed extinct twice - rediscovered by Geoffrey Orbell near Lake Te Anau in the Murchison Mountains, 1948
 * Orokonui have one pair of takahē called Quammen and Paku.
 * Paku the female laid one egg in 2013 - didn't hatch, built another nest and laid another egg
 * Infertility of takahē due to?
 * Takahē pair for life - up to 12 years
 * Eats grass, shoots and insects, but predominantly tussock and other alpine grass species
 * Have been seen eating a putangitangi duckling
 * Poo is cylindrical, green and white ended
 * Up to 7 metres of finger size pellets per day

Moa

 * Females bigger than males
 * Males most probably incubated the egg
 * Many NZ plants evolved defensive features to stop the moa from browsing on them
 * Horoeka,

=Activities=